IO connectors on Parallella rev0

[psupine]

Are you sure you want to arrange the connectors with the symmetry? It looks pretty, but it increases the likelihood of some ham fist with fading eyesight (me?) someday trying to push the daughter card in on the wrong orientation.
What is the mating height of the Samtec connector (vs the height of the RJ45)? Will a daughter card need a cut out? This would make the orientation obvious, but would make routing to that connector on the daughter card more difficult?
If you moved the Samtec connector adjacent to the RJ45 a little to the left so that it cleared the RJ45, the routing would be easier on the daughter card if the mating height needed a cutout, OR would make the orientation obvious if there was no cutout.

Edit: Or is the RJ45 on the opposite side of the board to the Samtec connectors? In which case, the concern over orientation still applies.

[tschaboo]

I think it's not a good idea to make IO only available through those Samtec connectors.

You can't buy those connectors anywhere as consumer. Even at the big ones (RS Electronics, Farnell, Digikey, Mouser) they are not listed. If you would get them they would probably very expensive in small quantities and even then it's surface-mount only!

Of course, if you will be able to offer breakout boards for less than 5 USD with less than 2 USD shipping worldwide, it would be okay for me, but it would be nice to have an idea about the price of adapters before you commit to the final design.

Those 1/10th-inch headers might be crappy, but they are good enough for lots of things and cost "nothing". And everyone who has a soldering iron has them laying around...

[aolofsson]

[tschaboo]

[anlumo]

[Folknology]

Can you provide the part numbers for the connectors you are using, or more particularly the part numbers for the connectors that we need to place on any daughter boards, I need these to get the templates made for PCB daughter cards. As for availability I agree it can be difficult to get these connectors and European shipping and customs can really push the price up, not to mention the inconvenience.

One of the ideas I am working on is designing a daughter board breakout with multiple 0.1 inch headers making it simpler for folks to build small low cost ad ons for the board. I will work on getting something posted around this idea to help start the discussion shortly.

regards
Al

[tschaboo]

@Al:
BSH-030-01-FDA on the board
BTH-030-01-FDA on the card. (Source: page 12 of parallella_reference).

[Folknology]

[Folknology]

I am assuming these are the ones that go on the Daughter boards then ?

Will be using these for the footprints on the templates, let me know If any of this is wrong.

regards
Al

[Veqtor]

I also find the choice of the samtac connectors a bit concerning.
Of course for high speed applications I can see their benefit, but you really should supply some samtac->IDC breakout boards (just a small pcb w. samtac on one side and idc on the other... Or you could do a docking board that breaks out all the headers as a arduino-esque board, compatible w. arduino mega boards by routing the correct fpga pins to the various headers.

Now, I realize that the design is at a late stage, but reorienting the placement of the various headers could provide the means for some cool modularity, I'm talking about rotating the headers on the top or bottom, that way you could provide breakouts that bring out pins and use the same one for all four connections.


This is with 5x12 headers:

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