I have already sent an email to the spark@sparkfun,but I thought I’ll post it here too.
Hey Sparkfun,
I’m an undergrad student in electronics from India.I blog at http://kmmankad.blogspot.com.
I’m going to go right over to the topic,which is a Cypress PSoC 3 board I’ve designed,which I feel would be a great addition to your product catalog.I have designed it in line with the Arduino mantra,of low cost and easy to use and versatile hardware.I noticed you already keep a PSoC 1 board,but this one is based on the PSoC3,and can support the PSoC5 too.
It has been featured on DangerousPrototypes.com,and generated good interest among the Cypress PSoC community so far.I have got numerous emails asking I could sell them,and many of them suggested I approach you guys with my design,to take it forward.
I call it the “EzPSoC3”,of which I attach a few pictures and design files in its fully(almost) assembled form.
Heres a feature list of the board:
-Uses the unique Mixed Signal (48pin SSOP) PSoC3 family of chips,i.e upto 64kb Flash and 8kb SRAM as well as 2kb EEPROM.
The Cypress PSoC3 is an 8051 core Mixed Signal System on chip,with a max clock speed of 67Mhz.
-has 26 GPIOs brought out to 0.1" pitch headers,which are at a breadboard compatible distance apart from each other.
-5 and 3.3V logic levels supported
-on-board USB connector can be used for USB based designs
-Has an on-board 32khz crystal for the on chip RTC.
-Easy programming via a USB Bootloader.
-An on-board user-programmable LED,and an LED to indicate bootloader status.
The board was designed in EAGLE V5.8,and I have used the sparkfun library to make this initial version of the board.
**In my opinion,this is attractive from a commercial stand point because:**-This is the only easy to use and low cost PSoC3 board out there.
-The other PSoC boards are from the company(Cypress semi.) and are all very very costly.
-Not only are the existing boards costly,but they are not that prototyping friendly.This design begs you to plug and play!
-This board uses a USB bootloader,which eliminates the need for a “miniprog3”(the programmer reqd.) which itself is $89 on the Cypress web-store.
The remaining points in this are due to the greatness of the chip and software itself.I will not go into that,since I guess you guys know the awesome power that the mixed signal PSoC3 platform provides.Also,
-The software here,i.e PSoC Creator 2.0 is a free,very intuitive and easy to use,GUI configuration oriented development environment,which is why people who have used it really get like it.There are an astounding number of regular as well as advanced components(example : SPDIF,multi channel Programmable Digital Filters etc) that are usable with the PSoC platform all easy to use and very well documented in their respective ‘datasheets’.
As far as documentation and support goes,the company has a very good range of Videos and tutorials(here) as well as a broad library of quality appnotes around the PSoC 3 and 5.My beginners PSoC3 tutorial series is also in the drafting stage,and I will start rolling out these detailed tutorials soon.There is a very active forum(herehttp://www.cypress.com/?app=forum and here http://www.psocdeveloper.com/forums/) on the company website too,and lots of hobbyists who use the PSoC3 and PSoC5.(but no where near the Arduino population.)
Now,note that this is an initial version of the board,and I have the following changes lined up.I haven’t devoted much time to executing these yet,since I would like to know first if this proposal can lead to something more concrete.
Changelist,or rather to-do:
0.Make the device pads longer,since the current one has them a little short for the chip.
1.Change the GPIO and power header layouts to be arduino(mega?) compatible(so that shields and such may be shared conveniently.)
2.Use the 100pin TQFP package of the chip.That way,the board can have 2 versions,i.e the PSoC 3 and PSoC 5,since their TQFP packages are pin compatible.
3.Add a header for an 16x2 character LCD.
4.Use a mini-usb instead of a USB type B.
5.Add an external Mhz crystal with proper routing.
6.Integrate the 5pin programming header with the GPIO headers.
7.Improve the power supply section by having a DC barrel jack input to 5V and 3.3V regulators,each of which can be individually connected to the Analog and digital power lines using a jumper,which makes for a very flexible power supply section.
8.If its possible,add a MicroSD slot too.
How do the costs work?
Heres a rough workup of the costs involved-
Initial costs involved:
-The MiniProg3 - $89 (to burn the boot-loader on each board)
Per-board costs involved:
These are just an estimates…or rather timid guesses,'cuz I have no idea of the actual run-time costs you guys face.
–Chip cost will be up to $30.14 (100pcs) for the most feature rich PSoC5 part with ARM Cortex-M3 core and 256kb flash & 64kb SRAM and more…see it here…http://www.cypress.com/?mpn=CY8C5568AXI-060
–Costs for the other components on the board,i.e capacitors,resistors,voltage regulators,male/female headers and the USB connector would come to around 5-10 USD.
–Add 2USD for the PCB manufacture(I don’t know what the assembly costs would be like.)
–Add 2USD for the miniUSB cable
So the cost comes to a maximum of $40-45,which is quite cheap for the kind of hardware-software solution that this is.
We could have 2-3 variants,with different chips,so we have hardware in different price bands and platforms,hence covering the entire PSoC3/5 hardware market.
I’ll try and link the pictures of my prototype(note the incoming changes I mentioned above.),the relevant design files made in EAGLE V5.8.The project is licensed CC-BY-SA 3.0,and bears the OSHW logo.
Hope we can make this work.
Thanks and Regards,
kmmankad
