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Microcontroller Dev Boards: What features do you like to have (or to add?)

baldengineer

image

A couple of weeks ago, I bribed (with coffee) to send me one of his Pi PIco Eurocards. As the name implies, these are a development board for the Pi Pico / RP2040. In the past, another friend sent me one of his all-in-one microcontroller development boards (pictured above). And I have designed a few boards that had development features on them. Besides those, boards like Adafruit's Feathers or even the iconic Arduino Uno could be considered dev boards. Last, historically, microcontroller manufacturers had elaborate evaluation platforms for their chips.

All of these points made me wonder: what are the features YOU want to see in a microcontroller development board?

image

If we use 's Eurocard, some notable features are:

  • Headers for changing power source (external / Pi Pico / Programmer)
  • Integrated programmer/debugger (RP2040-based Xiao, in this case)
  • Prototype areas for through-hole and surface mount parts
  • SD Card
  • Button
  • LED
  • (and many more)

In addition to features, what tricks or tips have people learned when making a board like this one?

Parents

  • Another benefit of large boards is that they can house a lot of project : ) That trainer board's breadboard area could be used to carry a PCB or stripboard or perfboard etc, just placed or pushed on top. I do the same thing on the Pico board.

    I was experimenting with audio in the photo here. Since this amplifier board needed 12V, I could take that power from the screw terminals visible at the right side of the photo, powering everything from the single barrel connector.

    image

    I don't use many MikroE Click boards, but I needed one here, so I prototyped a Click adapter to plug on top. Actually normal stripboard/perfboard can be plugged on, but I had a few older revision Pico Eurocard boards so I cut one in half to plug on top here. Might as well reuse scrap boards if possible:

    image

    GPIO pins in order can help sometimes; the connector on the right side is organized in that order, so the LED 7-segments could be nicely in A-G segment sequence on the header:

    image

    Soldered parts on the main area:

    image

    The parts are really easy to desolder (so that the board can be reused many times)  because of this; there's a gap between the holes and the pads:

    image

    Incidentally, 30 AWG wire is always handy to have on hand for creating projects/fixing circuit board problems etc.

    image

Reply

  • Another benefit of large boards is that they can house a lot of project : ) That trainer board's breadboard area could be used to carry a PCB or stripboard or perfboard etc, just placed or pushed on top. I do the same thing on the Pico board.

    I was experimenting with audio in the photo here. Since this amplifier board needed 12V, I could take that power from the screw terminals visible at the right side of the photo, powering everything from the single barrel connector.

    image

    I don't use many MikroE Click boards, but I needed one here, so I prototyped a Click adapter to plug on top. Actually normal stripboard/perfboard can be plugged on, but I had a few older revision Pico Eurocard boards so I cut one in half to plug on top here. Might as well reuse scrap boards if possible:

    image

    GPIO pins in order can help sometimes; the connector on the right side is organized in that order, so the LED 7-segments could be nicely in A-G segment sequence on the header:

    image

    Soldered parts on the main area:

    image

    The parts are really easy to desolder (so that the board can be reused many times)  because of this; there's a gap between the holes and the pads:

    image

    Incidentally, 30 AWG wire is always handy to have on hand for creating projects/fixing circuit board problems etc.

    image

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