Hardware Optimization Suggestions


Guest boseji

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Hello,

I have been using the Papilio One for a few days. Found some things that can be helpful for future kits and designs on the Papilio Platform lineup.

The Papilio one board is a FPGA board which means its highly static sensitive and there are chances that the surface that its kept on might be conductive in itself. Then there is a risk of damaging the FPGA. So I would suggest that like in Arduino or many other development boards we need to have some 4 Rubber Bumpers on each corner of the board. I have added 4 plastic standoffs using super-glue on my board 250k board.

The Pin hole headers should be compatible for both male as well as female berg pins of 2.54mm pitch. At present the Papilio board can support the Female headers only.

I am preparing a proto-board to support general purpose development on the Papilio One board. Kind of Shield of Papilio.

I wish to request every one to join me in this thread and post more hardware suggestions to make the Papilio One in true sense the Arduino of the FPGA world.

Warm Regards,

Boseji

http://m8051.blogspot.com

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Hello,

A case would be a nice idea down the lane as we progress and have the more advance version of Papilio One.

Also for prototyping purpose- can you suggest the best way of connecting the Papilio One board to a Bread board. As at present I am connecting it via wires and they come off very often.

Warm Regards,

Boseji

http://m8051.blogspot.com

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If you don't have headers already and plan on using the P1 exclusively with a breadboard then I would solder 1 row of I/O headers on each side facing downwards. I made sure the spacing was on a .1" grid so the whole thing can be plugged into a large breadboard or two breadboards. You would then just run a jumper wire for GND to the breadboards GND bus and the same for whatever VCC you want to use.

If you already have female headers soldered in then you can just use Male headers and put them into the female headers, you will probably have to move the black seperator so it is more in the middle, or just get some wire wrap headers that are longer. This will allow you to turn the P1 upside down and plug directly into a breadboard.

The other option is to use a computer style IDE cable to go from the P1 to a breadboard.

Jack.

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  • 2 months later...
Guest boseji

Hello,

Today I was trying to solder some male Berg pins to the Papilio-One.

However I found that the diameter of the holes was 30mil drill.

This was a problem with my board or the design I was not sure.

So I opened the Layout to check and when I went in to the Library to check the actual connector, Well my suspicion was right. We need to use the Female Connector parts only.

So I am now modifying the Library part to have 40mil drill and another part with the Spark-fun style offset placement. I would share this, meanwhile pls confirm is my observation are correct.

Warm Regards,

Boseji

http://m8051.blogspot.com

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Hello Boseji,

The diameter of the holes was made as small as possible while still accommodating Male or Female .1" pin headers.

The reason for doing this is because the single biggest design concern with the Papilio was getting as many I/O pins as possible to be routed over an unbroken ground plane. This helps with crosstalk and allows high speed applications. If you increase the size of the headers you will most likely see that clearance rules are violated when you do a DRC check in EAGLE. There are some I/O lines that could not be made any smaller and the only way to get them routed on the top layer, over an unbroken ground plane, was to make the size of the holes smaller.

Do you have a picture of the type of connector you are trying to use? All of the .1" pin headers that I have used have all fit with no problems.

Jack.

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Guest boseji

Hello,

I now understand your problem.

Possibly I should use less thicker pins.

I measured the pin diameter of the connector, it was 35mil.

That's the reason it was not working out.

Here is some part which is similar to the one I am using.

Digikey A26561-ND

Hope that when I have updated my lib I would post the Eagle library script here.

Warm Regards,

Boseji

http://m8051.blogspot.com

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