Over the last few months I’ve designed and built a number of boards, with several more already planned. As the range has started to grow, I’ve also begun to get a clearer idea of the different types of boards I want Protoworks to develop and how they fit together.

For the time being, I intend to organise them into three broad ranges:

  • Just Boards
  • Building Block Boards
  • Industrial Boards

There will inevitably be some overlap between them, and I’m deliberately not trying to create rigid boundaries, but I think these three categories provide a useful way of organising what I’m building and, more importantly, the purpose each board is intended to serve.

Broadly speaking, I see them as a progression from learning and experimentation, through prototyping and system development, to boards intended for deployment in professional systems.

Just Boards#

The ‘Just Boards’ range will consist of boards deliberately designed to be assembled by the end user.

They will be simple enough to build without solder paste, reflow ovens, hot-air stations or other specialist assembly equipment. Wherever practical, they will use through-hole components, 1206-sized passive components and IC packages such as SOIC, TSSOP and DIP that can be reasonably hand-soldered with an ordinary soldering iron.

The components will also be chosen with accessibility in mind. Wherever possible, they should be available from general electronics retailers and marketplaces such as Amazon, AliExpress and Banggood, rather than requiring an order from a traditional component distributor where minimum quantities, shipping charges and picking fees can sometimes make a very small project disproportionately expensive.

That simplicity is an intentional part of the design rather than merely a consequence of reducing cost.

I want these boards to be useful to hobbyists, students, electronics clubs and anyone else who wants to build something themselves rather than simply buy a finished module. They may also provide a useful introduction to surface-mount assembly without immediately requiring someone to work with tiny components or specialist equipment.

The PCB designs will normally be made available so that users can order the bare boards themselves and populate them using commonly available components.

Building Block Boards#

The ‘Building Block Boards’ range will consist of more sophisticated functional modules.

These boards will typically contain smaller SMT components, more ICs and more complex layouts than the Just Boards range, and assembling them manually may require equipment such as a hot-air rework station, solder paste or a hot plate.

They will, however, remain deliberately friendly to prototyping and experimentation.

Where practical they will expose signals through ordinary headers and connectors so that they can be connected using jumper wires, ribbon cables, breadboards or other Building Block Boards.

Most boards in this range will have a fairly specific purpose rather than attempting to provide an entire system on a single PCB. One board might provide an isolated communications interface, another might provide digital I/O, another might provide power management, and another might provide the microcontroller responsible for controlling the overall system.

The idea is that these functional blocks can then be combined to create something more substantial.

The UCMOD microcontroller modules and their associated carrier boards are one example of how this can work. Rather than permanently attaching a particular microcontroller to every board, a carrier can provide the application-specific hardware while a removable UCMOD module provides the processing capability.

The intention is not to compete with the huge number of inexpensive generic breakout boards already available. Instead, I want the Building Block Boards to be documented and tested engineering modules that make relatively advanced functionality straightforward to incorporate into prototypes and one-off systems.

Where practical, schematics, PCB layouts and bills of materials will also be made available. This means someone can buy an assembled board for convenience, but they are not necessarily dependent on Protoworks continuing to manufacture it if they would rather produce or modify the board themselves.

I also intend to create a modest online shop where selected boards can be purchased directly. Those boards would generally be professionally manufactured and assembled by whichever PCB fabrication and assembly service I am using at the time.

Some larger or mechanically vulnerable components, such as certain headers or connectors, may occasionally be left for the customer to install where doing so reduces the likelihood of damage during shipping.

These boards will also form part of the technical foundation for the wider Protoworks prototyping and engineering work. A useful communications, power or interface board developed for the Building Block range can potentially be reused across many different customer projects rather than having to redesign the same basic circuitry every time.

Industrial Boards#

The ‘Industrial Boards’ range will take many of the same modular ideas but apply them to boards intended for professional and industrial applications.

These boards will place greater emphasis on electrical protection, component quality, mechanical robustness, maintainability and predictable behaviour under fault conditions.

Depending on the application, that may mean improved input protection, isolation, protection against ESD or transients, more mechanically robust connectors, wider operating temperature ranges, improved creepage and clearance, or components chosen for long-term availability rather than simply minimum cost.

The exact requirements will obviously depend on what a particular board is intended to do. Calling something an Industrial Board isn’t intended to imply that every board automatically meets every industrial standard or certification imaginable. Instead, it describes the design priorities behind the product.

I expect some Industrial Boards to begin life as Building Block Boards.

A circuit can first be developed and tested as a relatively accessible prototyping board and, if it proves useful, later be adapted for a more demanding environment by improving its protection circuitry, connectors, mechanical design, component selection and other aspects of the design.

These boards will generally be modular and have clearly defined responsibilities.

For example, one board might handle a higher-voltage power input and protection, another might contain the microcontroller and control logic, while other boards handle communications, sensors, outputs or specialised interfaces.

Separating these functions should make systems easier to design, test, repair and upgrade.

I expect many of these boards eventually to be connected through some form of bus or backplane system, although the exact architecture is something I’m still exploring.

Where suitable standards already exist, my intention is to use them rather than inventing proprietary alternatives simply for the sake of doing so.

More generally, I want Protoworks products to use documented interfaces and established protocols wherever practical. A Protoworks-specific connector or mechanical arrangement may sometimes make sense, but that does not mean the protocol travelling over it needs to be proprietary.

Interoperability with boards and equipment from other manufacturers is something I would like to encourage where it is technically practical.

Unlike most of the Building Block and Just Boards ranges, Industrial Boards will not necessarily be released as open-source designs while they remain commercial products.

However, if a board is eventually retired or no longer commercially viable, I may release the design under an appropriate open-source hardware licence. That could allow users who depend on an older board to continue manufacturing or maintaining it where upgrading an existing system isn’t practical.

Even where the complete design isn’t open source, I intend to publish enough technical information for customers to understand how a board interfaces with the outside world and how it can be integrated into their own systems.

Ownership and Openness#

One principle I want to carry across all three ranges is that buying a Protoworks product should not unnecessarily restrict what the customer can do with the physical hardware they have purchased.

If someone wants to repair it, modify it, analyse it, reverse engineer it, integrate it into another product or repurpose it for something I never anticipated, I don’t intend to deliberately prevent them from doing so.

Ownership of the physical product does not, of course, automatically transfer ownership of Protoworks’ copyrighted design files, firmware, trademarks or other intellectual property.

Where a board is released as open-source hardware, the additional rights to manufacture, modify, redistribute or otherwise use the design will be defined by the particular open-source licence under which it is released.

The distinction I want to maintain is between protecting legitimate intellectual property and artificially restricting what customers can do with hardware they have bought.

Wrap Up#

None of this is intended to box Protoworks into three rigid product categories forever.

It’s simply a framework that reflects the kinds of boards I’m already developing and gives me a way of deciding what a particular design is actually intended to achieve.

The Just Boards range is about accessibility and building things yourself.

The Building Block Boards range is about providing documented, reusable functional modules for experimentation, prototyping and system development.

The Industrial Boards range is about taking those same modular ideas and applying them to hardware intended for more demanding professional environments.

Across all three ranges, I want to keep the same basic principles wherever possible: designs should be modular, documented, repairable, understandable and interoperable, without unnecessary lock-in.

I’m not expecting Protoworks to become a huge company. What I would like to build is a sustainable specialist engineering business that produces useful hardware, supports my wider prototyping and development work, and hopefully provides enough value to both the maker and professional communities for me to make a decent living from it.

For now, these three ranges seem like a good foundation to build from.