Hi
I have been thinking of designing a controller board myself for a while now and have recently started drafting up a schematic. Since I am not very good at programming I was hoping to stay in the comfort of 8bit but have given up on xmega that I hoped to be embraced by the devs. Now when Arduino due is here I thougt that if I choose a MCU in the ATSAM3 family maybe I could manage porting to a smaller chip.
What I want to do is make a simple bare minimum controller board that focuses on robustness and reliability rather than flexibility and lot of functionality. With help from Ambrop7, the developer of APrinter firmware, who also have offered to help me with software, I decided to make a board with ATSAM3SxA. The chip is available with 64k, 128k and 256k flash.
I am starting out with making a developement board with just the MCU, voltage regulator, USB and the pins fanned out on sockets to evaluate the chip and decide on functional pinout. The board is 50X50mm in size to fit prototype PCB service outline. Step 2 is to make a plug-in board with the driver circuitry.
The component values in the present version of the schematic should be considered under investigation but I thought I can present it here anyway to see if I can get som feedback and suggestions.
Any input is welcome :)
I have been thinking of designing a controller board myself for a while now and have recently started drafting up a schematic. Since I am not very good at programming I was hoping to stay in the comfort of 8bit but have given up on xmega that I hoped to be embraced by the devs. Now when Arduino due is here I thougt that if I choose a MCU in the ATSAM3 family maybe I could manage porting to a smaller chip.
What I want to do is make a simple bare minimum controller board that focuses on robustness and reliability rather than flexibility and lot of functionality. With help from Ambrop7, the developer of APrinter firmware, who also have offered to help me with software, I decided to make a board with ATSAM3SxA. The chip is available with 64k, 128k and 256k flash.
I am starting out with making a developement board with just the MCU, voltage regulator, USB and the pins fanned out on sockets to evaluate the chip and decide on functional pinout. The board is 50X50mm in size to fit prototype PCB service outline. Step 2 is to make a plug-in board with the driver circuitry.
The component values in the present version of the schematic should be considered under investigation but I thought I can present it here anyway to see if I can get som feedback and suggestions.
Any input is welcome :)