Hardware design
===============

Hardware component selection
----------------------------

After finishing the prototype it was time to start production. This means
to order components in larger quantities and create a PCB to fit the components.

The Initial run will be for 50 pieces but I first stelleld to order parts 
for 10 pieces and ended up only ordering 5 pieces.

The PCB design was to be done using `KiCAD`_ and using the shield template
that was offered by `Olimex`_ on their website/git repo


Odering and choosing components.
--------------------------------
Until now we designed something with the components we where able to find but we did not have enough
for out own project. With 3d printing 


Software tools.
---------------

The machine used during the design was a slightly oder laptop running ubuntu (LTS) (10.04)
and I installed KiCAD from the PPA (the KiCAD version in ubuntu is outdated) the version can be seen here

.. image:: images/ee_design/kicad_version.png

KiCAD development goes quite fast and in general things improve for the better. On problem I encountered
an other project is that KiCAD is not always very backward compatible this can be quite a challenge when
Using other people's code as I did for the shield. This time I was lucky.

The flow of KiCAD and finding out where options and path need to be configured remains a constant quest
but you need to at least do the following:

 - Use the library wizard to download files from the KiCAD github pages (the new library format with directory names that end with .pretty)
 - Configure library path AND add libraries to your project to make it complete
 - Possibly convert old libraries to the new format
 
Tasks.
------

.. _KiCAD: http://kicad-pcb.org/
.. _Olimex: http://olimex.com/