Products for Raspberry Pi designed using DesignSpark

8th March 2017

Lanna Deamer

0 0

Alex Eames, the creator of RasPIO products, explains about his products and how he came to use the RS PCB CAD software to create them all.

Alex Eames created the popular RasPiO range of Raspberry Pi add-ons and accessories and he also runs the RasPi.TV - a Raspberry Pi blog and YouTube channel, which between them have eight million views. Eames specialises in clear, complete 'How-to' articles, reviews and general 'Maker' projects. Eames has been blogging/vlogging full-time since May 2012, when his first Raspberry Pi (bought from RS) arrived. All of his PCBs to-date have been designed using DesignSpark PCB.

In 2014 he started off with:

Port identification labels that you can read.
Breakout boards with clear labels, multiple breakouts and optional protective circuitry.

In 2015 he released:

The Duino – a board to learn Arduino programming on the Pi.
A 6″ RPi.GPIO reference ruler.

In 2016, so far he released:

The Pro Hat – which protects the Pi ports and breaks them out in numerical order.
Analog Zero – a Pi Zero sized Analogue board.
A 12″ GPIO Zero reference Ruler.

All of Eames products are things that he wanted to be able to use his self. His newest product that was funded on KickStarter, is the RasPiO GPIO Zero Ruler. It’s a 12″/30cm reference ruler with all the most commonly used GPIO Zero code and Raspberry Pi GPIO pinouts on it. An incredibly useful tool for GPIO tinkerers and as a learning aid. Eames tends to launch products on KickStarter these days because he finds it a good way of reaching people interested in the boards, and it’s a great way to gauge demand.

Finding DesignSpark PCB and designing
Back in October 2012, Eames went to the Oxford Raspberry Jam, hosted by Pete Wood at RS Headquarters. He had a very attention-grabbing flag-waving Gertboard demo that Eames showed at the Jam and also got talking to Pete about hardware and PCBs. Wood suggested he take a look at DesignSpark PCB. Eames also looked at a whole bunch of other tools. He said: "I have to be honest, getting into PCB design is a fairly steep learning curve. You can’t just do it in an afternoon. It’s something you have to really want to do. This is the same no matter which software you choose."

At the time, DesignSpark PCB had just enough tutorials online to get him started, there are lots more now which is great for beginners. Thereafter, it was many hours of 'learning by doing' with very occasional requests for help on the DesignSpark forums.

Eames spent a lot of the summer of 2013 designing various different boards and launched his first three products in March 2014. Since then he's used DesignSpark PCB to create and launch at least eight more PCB products.