Projects

Printed Circuit Board Layout Tool

PCB is a tool for the layout of printed circuit boards. PCB can produce industry standard RS-274-X and Excellon NC-Drill format output for submission to board manufacturers.

FidoCadJ

A multiplatform drawing program dedicated to electronics. Schematics and PCB can be traced easily and represented by a very compact text format, easy to embed in a newsgroup post or a forum message. Drawings can be exported in a multitude of graphic formats, included pdf.

Fritzing

Fritzing is an open-source initiative to support designers and artists to take the step from physical prototyping to actual product. We are aiming to create a software in the spirit of Processing and Arduino, that allows the designer/artist/researcher/hobbyist to document their Arduino-based ... [More] prototype and create a PCB layout for manufacturing. The complimenting website helps to share and discuss drafts and experiences as well as to reduce manufacturing costs. Fritzing will essentially be an Electronic Design Automation software with a low entry barrier, suited for the needs of designers and artists. It will use the metaphor of the breadboard, so that it will be easy to transfer your hardware sketch to the software. From there it will be possible to export CAD files ready to be sent to a [Less]

cnc-milling-machine

The CNC PCB Milling Machine project is the complete specifications for the software and hardware for a complete light duty Computer and Numerical Control (CNC) milling machine designed primarily to mill isolation traces in copper clad printed circuit board material. Additionally, it can handle ... [More] milling of soft materials such as plastics and aluminum. This entire project is now open source. This includes the design of the physical machine itself (most of which I owe to many other excellent sources), the design of the electronic motor driver circuit, the PIC assembly source code for the firmware embedded in the driver circuit, and the Java source code for the GUI based application that runs the machine. I am very much a junk box designer. The primary selection criteria from most of the hardware that makes up this project was what I already had on-hand or could obtain cheaply form local resources and EBay. The design of the physical machine was limited by what I could do with a limited set of power woodworking tools (Table Saw, small Drill Press, Router and Router Table, and Power Miter saw). There is practically nothing in the physical design of the machine itself that did not come from one of the many excellent references sources I found via a never-ending series of Google searches. The software is my own design, influenced heavily by the ideas of many others that had done similar projects in the past. It is not the best example of my Java development work, but I am proud of it just the same. Currently, the software works only with my machine microcode. It does not generate any G-Code output or convert between formats, but it certainly could go that direction. There is a simulated machine mode that can work without a connection to the microcode. It will do the displays and generate the isolation traces, etc. Modifications to output G-Code (or any other protocol) would not be terribly hard to do, and could be fit into the project nicely. [Less]

USBWafer

USBWafer is a small Free Software and Free Hardware USB dongle for various purposes.

NGerber

NGerber is a small class library that allows .NET applications to easily write Gerber files (commonly used for EDA to specify circuit board layouts). Gerber files created with this library are compatible with the RS-274-X standard.

pcb-fpw

pcb-fpw is a FootPrintWizard for pcb, the interactive layout editor.

Edacious

Electronics design automation (EDA) suite for design of electronic circuits and systems, simulation (through physical / semi-empirical methods) and PCB layout/fabrication tools. Includes a GUI interface (Agar-based), Unix-style command-line interfaces and a simple-to-use C API.

openbiosprog

openbiosprog is a fully Open Hardware and Free Software programmer for BIOS chips. The first version will support Low Pin Count (LPC) chips, later versions might add support for parallel flash chips and SPI chips.

OpenDIMM

The OpenDIMM project aims to create Open Hardware RAM DIMMs.