Quote:
Originally Posted by SpmP
Anyway, I am going to need 28+spares of these soon, and looking at getting a digikey order over the threshold, but before I do, I figure I should ask if anyone is needing any boards fabbed, or has experience with who is good for doing it. Maybe a bulk order is better.
Also any feedback as to which parts are better etc, or maybe has an old order in csv that may speed things up 8)
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I have posted details of my component purchases on the Sourceforge website (look under Files -> Components). Modules were about $4 each, Master about $50. These prices are parts only without the board itself and without the PIC microprocessors.
Have a look at the AEVA forum thread (low cost BMS) if you haven't already - there is a lot of activity over there. In particular Astro has found that the Master board can use the 16F1847 PIC microprocessor chip. This is a drop-in replacement for the 16F1827 listed in the bill of materials, but it has more memory if you think you might need it.
I had my boards made by PCB Train in the UK. They were very fast, knowledgeable and patient (I had never done this before and they helped me figure out what file formats worked best). For some reason I can't find an invoice right now to see how much they cost...
I will be wanting some Master boards soon, but I'm not sure if the economics would work out in our favor considering that we don't live in the same country. It may cost more to send mine over to me than it would have to get them done separately! Worth looking into though.
Quote:
Originally Posted by SpmP
I would much rather work with AVR due to my experience, for those who have played with the code does it look very PIC specific? Would it be a hard port to AVR C?
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I have not used AVR but I can make some general statements...
There are two versions of the code now, both written for the PICs. The original is for the Hi-Tech compiler and the later versions are for the XC8 compiler. My understanding is that both compilers are/were available from Microchip, but that XC8 is their current version. For some reason XC8 is quite different from Hi-Tech though - Hi-Tech has lots of useful library functions that are not included in XC8. XC8 has a free version, Hi-Tech does not. Hence the port to XC8!
It took a fair bit of effort to convert the code from Hi-Tech to XC8. It meant that I had to learn PIC in great detail before I could work out exactly what the Hi-Tech code was doing. I would suggest that you would have the same problem porting to AVR? You may need to learn PIC to work out what the code is doing, so might as well have used PIC anyway! Having said that, I did try to write the code in a portable way, but I am not the best coder in the world (or street), so there are probably lots of PIC specific things scattered around.