Let's see how many switchovers are going to be from Eagle to KiCAD! >:D

@abdullahkahraman Did something happen with eagle?

if i'm going to put an oscillator on a board with my ICE40 FPGA, and I only need it for the FPGA clock, is it better to go for something like 12MHz and use the PLL in the FPGA (which my current evaluation board design does), or should I just go straight to a 100Mhz oscillator and use it directly and remove my PLL (will this save some logic fabric??)

i need to use as little area on my FPGA as possible, so using this external clock source directly at the 100Mhz might be the way to go. I see the Olimex ICE40 eval board uses a 100Mhz oscillator directly into it

@Giskard42 who cares about Eagle, KiCAD is just amazing in general

eww, Autodesk bought Eagle from Cadsoft

@KyranF I wish I could switch to Kicad, but the switching costs at this point are huge for my purposes :(

@Giskard42 due to library?

or just supporting previous projects?

@KyranF All of the above. I understand there's a decent library converter, but all my libs are so scattered everywhere, it's a mess

I mean, if I absolutely have to switch, fine

yeah, well if you can get an intern student or whatever to spend the man-hours doing the conversion and also while they are at it, cleaning it all up for you and documenting it all I think it'd be a good thing

the license fees for whatever you are using now could be better spent elsewhere!

KiCAD is able to make schematic designs and PCB just as well as Altium now, and I actually like the workflow better in KiCAD

took some getting used to but it was worth it

@KyranF Yeah, I've taken Kicad for a spin and I loved it

@KyranF How's the autorouter?

I don't know i've never used it

K

#manualrouteftw

I wouldn't mind an auto-fan-out on my 256 BGA FPGA chip though

I for one like having a weekend, rather than a pretty board :p

i know altium supports that, i dont think Kicad does :(

There's very little I manually route :(

Hmm, peeps not saying good things about the autorouter

i like the scripting interface with KiCAD, it's a bit mysterious but with the python scripting and once you know the API, it's pretty neat

@KyranF That's...pretty darn cool

Holy crap python in kicad? Are you serious?

I'm sold!

i've written some basic scripts to go through and auto-hide/unhide all designators etc

yeah you have access to every object and field in python

So, I'm switching to kicad now.

i think the auto-router, if done properly, is probably okay. i mean, no auto-router is just a two-click affair. you have to set up all the rules and nets and whatnot

@KyranF Yeah

@KyranF I had pretty good results with the eagle autorouter default settings

But yeah

mhm

Oh it uses freeroute, apparently?

Neat

dunno, like i said i haven't used it

I think i might try doing bus-auto-routing in my FPGA board though

i have 48 digital sensor inputs going into a bunch of level-shifters, and there are buses everywhere

Ha, went apt-get install and it gave me a 2012 version

That's not what I wanted :|

I can see the appeal of a 12Mhz shitty one and using the FPGA's PLL to make the 100Mhz..

are there lower power (like, 10's of ma) oscillators out there?

@KyranF Looks like this one has a typical current of 6 ma? digikey.ca/product-detail/en/abracon-llc/ASFLMB-120.000MHZ-XY-T/…

Perhaps I'm reading it wrong?

yeah that's pretty good, and a max of 16mA in general at a faster clock than the other one i was looking at

i'll do some more parametric searching, I admit that I didn't do any useful searching yet, it was more of a "wow, fuck me sideways"

Aahahaha

Or, in a more Dave Jones quote, "You can run the bloody mile with 30 milliamps"

here we go, this one is perfect digikey.ca/product-detail/en/microchip-technology/…

yeah good old Dave Jones, one of my Australian compatriots!

@KyranF Aah, 9.5 milliamps running current, waht a bobby dazzler!

Good on yea

(sorry)

Can't find those at Tricky Dick's

it's only a bobby dazzler if it's a bargain

Ah, okay.

That makes sense.

Dick Smith's doesn't even sell electronic components anymore :(

@KyranF Gone the way of radioshack?

and the Australian version of "radio shack" which was Tandy Electronics also went out of business

now all we have is "Jaycar Electronics" but they hardly cater to electronics hobbyists, more of just consumer junk now

We've still got Sayal electronics in Canada, and it's bloody awesome

i'm working in Canada right now, and i hear that "The Source" used to be Radio Shack

also now a useless consumer goods store

@KyranF Yeah, it's like a ghost of it's former self

Geez, I'm trying to download a paper and the journal is charging me $60 gorram dollars

Screw that

i fucking hate that

research papers should all be free

Agreed

I mean, if they wanted a few bucks to keep a pdf archive going or something, to cover running expenses, fine

Aaron Swartz was fighting for a good thing, the freedom of research articles. It's sad the US government harassed him to death

That timing didn't work out

Whooops

wikipedia should just offer to host all the articles

wikipedia rocks

donate to them

@KyranF arxiv is pretty great

Already donated :)

It's pretty sweet

The problem is that it's hard to get the real content producers to care about publication access

@KyranF Our local Radio Shack is good - but they were originally an electronics store that licensed the brand.

@W5VO well i know that the "Radio Shack" name and license etc has been bought by someone and is intending to bring it all back, is that the same one you are talking about?

@KyranF No, ours is like 1-2 stores in the area, where they never were a franchise store, just an affiliate or something like that.

right

I can drop in and select from a large assortment of adafruit parts at the same price at adafruit

parts bins are well stocked with two types of components... expensive radio shack official parts, and parts he sourced by himself