We’ve covered Microchip’s MPLABX IDE over the course of the year, and were very excited to see the news that MPLABX is finally out of beta! MPLABX v1.0 has been released, and is available for download here, along with release notes and the latest copies of the various Microchip compilers.

Among other things, MPLABX offers the following features:

• Java-based, cross platform GUI: Program PICs on Mac, Windows, or Linux
• Refreshed, improved graphical user interface
• (Most of) the same great functionality from MPLAB 8

We are very excited about this project. MPLABX represents the first official cross-platform compiler/IDE (that we’re aware of), and we hope other chip companies follow in their path.

(via Dangerous Prototypes)

We’ve covered progress on the Eagle/Sketchup plugin EagleUp before, and it looks like v4.3 is ready for use. Via EagleUp:

After more than 3000 downloads, it’s time to improve eagleUp and add to new features.

• fixed curved board outlines (see below the note on outline curves)
• eagleUp now supports 1:1 scaling as well
• eagleUp also includes functions for scaling and measuring the final circuit
• automatic resizing of models during import, you can mix scale indifferently 1:1 and 1000:1 objects
• add support for sub folder ! keep your work folder clean, all eup, png, log files can be placed in a user defined sub folder. Check the settings window.
• add an option for simplified vias (no drill) for faster import of large models.
• add a board thickness unit selection, you can enter 1.6mm as well as 60 mils
• add a log file of the missing parts during the import in Sketchup, the log file is saved next to the eup file
• add support for an attribute-defined part name (see below)
• add possibility of minor modifications of the part (rotation, board side) directly from the Board
• added option to create top and bottom images as jpg files (necessary for some renderers, do not use otherwise)
• Eagle installation < 5.9 (including 4.xx) should use a simplified legacy exporter available here. It keeps most of the features of the full version.
• new PCB colors available, like a white solder mask (Winter is coming !)

The download page for EagleUp v4.3 is available here. In addition, installation and tutorial pages are available. What are your thoughts on the new version of EagleUp? Write your experiences in the comments below.

Introduction:

Over the course of the past year, NBitWonder has been undergoing an effort to improve the way in which we document and share projects.

It started almost a year ago with our initial documentation post. From there, we moved forward, releasing a set of Open Documentation templates, written in LaTeX, and available in our github repository. Those were used for quite some time, and provided a nice, standardized layout for all NBitWonder projects.

Further Refinements:

As nice as writing project documentation in LaTeX is, however, it suffers from a steep learning curve, and can be quite challenge to coerce into providing a particular desired output. Writing project documentation in LaTeX is somewhat akin to writing a dynamic website in notepad; it can be done, but arguably better (or at least more productive) methods exist for creating the desired end product.

With that in mind, we set out searching for a more powerful software package to write documentation in. The stipulations were that the software had to be open source (free as in speech and free as in beer), cross-platform, and easy to use, allowing many end users to adopt our work in their own hobbyist projects and allowing our work to be easily accessible for everyone. After review of the narrow list of softwares available that met these requirements, we settled on OpenOffice.org. The NBitWonder open documentation system, written in OpenOffice.org (OOo) is available here, and all existing NBitWonder projects at the time of this writing have been converted to use this new OpenOffice documentation.

OpenOffice: Pros and Cons

There are a number of advantages to using OpenOffice, as detailed below:

• Powerful User Interface:OpenOffice is an office suite, rather than a typesetting program. As such, it has a vastly more intuitive graphical user interface than LaTeX, and documentation output can be seen live without requiring compilation.
• Extension Support:As of version 3.0, OpenOffice.org supports the writing and development of extensions and macros written in a number of programming languages (python 2.6.1, in particular). As such, documentation improvements for the Open Documentation system can be developed and distributed in the form of OpenOffice extensions. This is a marked improvement over LaTeX, which doesn’t (in our experience with it) provide a particularly interface for user macros, as well as a considerable improvement over packages such as Microsoft Office, in which macros are only supported in various flavors of Basic.
• Open Source and Cross-Platform:OpenOffice is well known and truly cross-platform, including a Linux version, which is less than can be said for Microsoft Office or many other open source office programs.

Of course, with all of these advantages, there are a handful of disadvantages as well:

• Support for Developers: OpenOffice started out as the proprietary software package StarOffice, which was then purchased by Sun Microsystems in 1999. Sun Microsystems was later acquired by Oracle. Recently, however, Oracle parted ways with OpenOffice, setting it adrift without major corporate support for the system or funding for the top level developers. In spite of this, the OpenOffice project has been picked up by the Apache Foundation and is currently being hosted and supported there, and future stability of the project remains strong.
• Advanced Typesetting Capabilities: When it comes to formatting sophisticated mathematical equations in beautiful textbook style, LaTeX is the unquestioned king. Support for formulas in OpenOffice is there, though not nearly as good as LaTeX-based documentation. This is a secondary concern, however, and it is our belief that the advantages of OpenOffice over LaTeX outweigh this small disadvantage.

More work on NBitWonder’s documentation and software tools will be made available soon, but for the time being, feel free to try out our latest efforts by grabbing the Open Documentation System from our github repository.

Exciting news from Cadsoft today as they open Eagle v6 for beta testing. Eagle v6 is slated for release in early 2012, but in the meantime users can try the beta software. Via Makeafruit:

CadSoft invites EAGLE users to participate in testing new versions of the EAGLE Layout Editor.

We suggest that only users who already have experience with previous versions of EAGLE participate in the beta test. If you are new to EAGLE please use our current release version.

There are some limitations, however:

IMPORTANT NOTE: This beta version of EAGLE is NOT FOR PRODUCTION USE! Do not use it in any critical project, and only work with copies of your existing data files! Do not send board files created with this beta version of EAGLE to a board house – they may not yet be able to process the new EAGLE data files.
Any files written with this beta version of EAGLE will not be loadable with previous program versions!

Apparently, there are a few issues with having the beta run as freeware on OSX/Linux. To get around this, users have had luck copying “../EAGLE/bin/freeware.key” to “../EAGLE/bin/EAGLE.key”. So download the beta, give it a try, and let us know how it goes for you!

The blog and forums have been somewhat quiet for the last week, and some of you may have been curious what we were up to.

NBitWonder is an open source hardware website and community, with a number of projects in development, by multiple developers. When you have multiple developers, things get written and thought about in different ways. This is fantastic when tackling problems and proposing solutions, but can make things nebulous and incoherent for end users and developers interested in your project. So what do you do? Standardize!
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Spotted on the web today, a new electronic design automation (EDA) tool promises a new approach to collaboration on open source hardware projects.

The tool, called Upverter, is a cloud-based schematic editor for creating electrical schematics. Users can edit schematics for their own projects and projects developed by other users (via a forking system). It even allows users to integrate with existing github accounts and share further. From their blog, it appears that the Upverter team will be attending the Open Source Hardware Summit in New York, so that is a great time to go find them and share your reactions, if you happen to be attending.
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