Description

A miniature breakout board for rapid development of microprocessor projects

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Features

• ICSP connector for quick programming and power (PICkit compatible)
• All pins available on standard .1” pin headers
• Single sided PCB (easy to manufacture)
• 4 debug led’s
• 1 generic switch
• Connector for serial communication
• Power led
• On board crystal with decoupling caps
• Miniature size

Development

I needed a small PCB for a power meter project that I am working on. Instead of making a custom PCB I thought it was a good idea to build a generic version that can be used in several different projects. Since my microprocessor projects have many things in common, it made sense to make a breakout PCB that provides all the things that is needed: An ICSP connector to start with, access to all I/O, a power led and sometimes debug led’s, a switch, serial communication and a crystal. All the components are optional and you only mount the ones that you need. The PCB was manually routed and optimized using this method. I think it really shows the advantages of the manual routing and optimization. The PCB is very compact and doesn’t have a single bridge wire. It took less than one hour to design and fine tune. I milled the PCB using HTML cam to generate the g-code. Toner transfer or UV mask will of course also work, but then you need to manually drill the holes and cut out the board…

Other versions

It is quite easy to make different versions [for/of?] other processors. Let me know if there is anyone in particular that you miss, and I will see if I can find time to make a few other versions.

Assembly

This is not a project for the very beginner since all components are SMD (surface mount). However if you have access to decent equipment they shouldn’t cause any problem (solder station with a narrow tip, tweezers and preferably a microscope). Start with the 0805 components, then the chip and switch. Solder the pin headers and optional crystal last.

Bill of Materials (BOM)

1x single sided breakout board (etch, mill or order)
1x PIC 16F62X
1x 6×1 0.1” pin header (preferably angled)
1x 0805 0.1uF decoupling cap
2x 8×1 0.1” pin header (male or female) (optional)
1x 0805 green power led (optional)
1x 0805 1k resistor (if power led is used)
4x 0805 red debug led’s (optional)
4x 0805 1k resistors (if debug led’s are used)
1x SMD switch (5.1×5.1mm) (optional)
1x 0805 100k WPU resistor (if switch is used)
1x miniature 4/8 MHz crystal (4.86mm pitch) (optional)
2x 0805 1-68pF decoupling caps (if crystal is used)

Specification

25.4 x 31.75 [mm]

Version tracker

0.1             First version
0.2             Added led’s and switch
0.3             Added crystal and serial connector
0.4             Optimized size (current version)

Documents

Rhino project file (2D lines)
2D Vector export (svg)
2D Bitmap export (png @ 1200 dpi)
Demo code – LED chaser 

See also

• Designing a PCB
• Milling a PCB
• CAM processing in HTML

Licensing

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.