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| The new board shown fitted with a 40 pin DIL Package - eg ATmega1284 |
A Low Cost Generic Microcontroller and FPGA Board
The Arduino board format is now looking dated with its bulky footprint and only 20 useful I/O lines.
I realised that there was an opportunity to redesign the board and make it more useful for prototyping or developing with larger pin-count microcontrollers - yet retain nominal compatibility with the Arduino connector format, and therefore will also accept most original Arduino shields.
The pcb makes use of a standard 50mm x 50 mm board footprint - which are now manufactured very cheaply (as little as $14 for 10) by various low cost board houses.
The board format may also be used as a basis of a 50mm x 50 mm expansion shield.
Pin Naming.
Arduino started life with 6 Analogue inputs and 14 Digital I/O pins. Over the years these have often been labelled A for analogue and D for digital.
The naming convention I have settled upon keeps the A and D headers for backwards compatibility, but adds extra headers - labelled B, C, E and F. Alphabetical port names make sense
These additional 0.1" pitch headers are placed in-board of the existing headers - which give an inner row of headers on a 1.70" width, which makes these entirely compatible with most breadboards and 50mm x70mm 0.1" prototyping boards.
Header A is 6 pins - Arduino standard - providing analogue inputs
Header B is 6 pins - and provides additional lines with higher resolution analogue capability.
Header C is 8 pins - providing a mix of analogue, digital, communication and timer functions.
Header D is digital and has been extended to include the extra two I2C pins
Header E is 16 pins - for Expansion - and is exclusively digital GPIO
Header F is also for Future and may provide up to 5 GPIO lines
The layout of the headers has been chosen so as not to be entirely symmetrical - this hopefully prevents any shield from being plugged in back to front.
Making it Compatible with Arduino Shields.
A brief word about Arduino. Arduino originally offered 6 analogue input pins and 14 digital pins. Unfortunately due to a CAD error, the digital pins are not on a standard consecutive 0.1" spacing - as there is a gap of 0.060" between D7 and D8.
The first task was to come up with a shield footprint that could be compatible with this layout - yet fit into the narrower width of a 50mm square pcb. This was done by careful customisation of the size and shape of the header pads - so that they will just fit into a 50mm width.
The second task was to provide some additional 16 pin header strips, inboard of the original Arduino headers, which would give access to an additional 32 GPIO lines.
This was done in a way that would also allow two M3 fixing holes in opposite corners. Finally, 4 additional signals - not present on the original Arduino headers were added, to give an I2C and the 2 extra pins on the R3 power header.
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| The 50x50 pcb fitted with 100 pin LQFP and mini-USB connector |
Choice of Processor.
The 50 x 50 board layout could be used for any microcontroller that offers around 50 to 60 I/O lines and can be readily adapted to suit various packages - up to 100 pin LQFP (Like the STM32F746). For most projects it is a good match with 48 pin or 64 pin LQFP packages.
It may also be used with DIL footprint ICs - and it is just possible to shoehorn a 40 PIN DIL onto the pcb - such as ATmega1284 etc.
However because my recent experience lies with the STM32Fxxx range of ARM Cortex M3 and M4 microcontrollers, these were the obvious first choice.
Conveniently a board designed for one particular variant, can also be populated with another close family member - so I chose the STM32F103 workhorse, and the STM32F373 - which has a faster M4 core , a floating point unit and significantly more analogue ADC capability - in terms of ADC resolution and signal lines.
Each of these processors has a maximum of 51 or 52 GPIO lines, but once you remove two for the crystal, two for the USB, two for the ST-link and two for the RTC - you are down to a more manageable 44 lines.
The designation "PA" refers to the physical pins of GPIO Port PA on the STM32 mcu package - and not the A pins on the header. I hope this does not cause undue confusion.
Port PA 12 signals
Port PB 12 Signals
Port PC 14 Signals
Port PD 2 Signals
Port PE 2 Signals
Port PF 2 Signals
Total 44
This is 24 more than the original Arduino, so at least an additional 3 x 8 pin headers will be needed to accommodate these.
The problem is how best map the various GPIO ports on the ARM to the physical pins of the connectors - in a way that makes sense and clusters them by function. Separating into nominally analogue and digital is a good starting point.
Layout of the Ports.
In addition to the Arduino's A0-A5, the proposed board offers a further 10 analogue inputs - allowing A0 - A15 and 6 additional analogue or digital lines C0 to C5
These are provided on a 16 pin header on the same side as the existing analogue and power headers.
On the "digital side" of the board there is also and additional 16 pin connector. This is the Expansion, or Extra port - and is designated E0 to E15. If you want a 16 bit bus connected - say for a FPGA project, then this would be good use of port E.
Furthermore, later Arduino UNO R3 models offer two pins for I2C devices - these are added as D14 and D15.
Conclusion
The proposed 50 x 50 board size is convenient, compact and versatile. It has sufficient pins for the more demanding applications, and sufficient board area to allow plug in modules to be added.
The board can sensibly accept microcontrollers or FPGAs up to about 144 pin LQFP - which makes it viable for projects incorporating the STM32F7xx Cortex M7 or the Xilinx Spartan 6 range of FPGAs - both of which are available in LQFP - and this solderable by the hobbyist/enthusiast.
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