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These boards are very cool, and I would happily play with them if I had time. However one thing is a bit mystery to me, what are the use cases more professional

These boards are very cool, and I would happily play with them if I had time. However one thing is a bit mystery to me, what are the use cases more professionally? Obviously there must be lots of non-hobbyist demand for boards like this.

katmannthree 7y ago
The boards are a great reference point for developing a product with a given component. Any time I make something with an MCU I pick up a couple of dev boards just like this to learn from. It's basically a ``known good'' configuration and really handy for prototyping and debugging hardware issues.
nrp 7y ago
Typically, boards like this would only be used for prototyping. It's a dead simple system and there is basically nothing of value in the board itself for production use. Any design using the same microcontroller would just incorporate it directly rather than integrating an extra board. That differs from more complex boards like an RPi Compute Module or an RF module. On those, you might take advantage of the existing high-layer-count board attached to a simpler, low-layer-count board, avoid needing to redesign systems that have signal integrity or RF challenges, or utilize existing certifications around emissions.
- penagwin 7y ago
  > or utilize existing certifications around emissions. This is one of the biggest reasons for an extra board for RF modules. RF is black magic where you REALLY need to know what you're doing to develop your own board, and if it's not in an already certified module then you have to have your product pass FCC certifications (costing a lot of money)
  - dfox 7y ago
    Very often even the layer count is an issue. For perfect example see almost any brand name japanese AV DVD/DVR combo which has giant single layer board with only passives, connectors and links which holds small subboard with bunchs of (fc)BGAs and somewhat incredible layer count. On the other hand for small scale devices not only certification comes into play but also availability and cost. There are niche devices that simply use some Arduino-ish board as a component, because the board is easier to source and, more importantly, cheaper than the MCU on it, personaly I view that as bad design and good reason to use some non-AVR MCU, but that is how it is.
  - Gibbon1 7y ago
    There are a couple of issues. PCB and and Assembly for an RF circuit while it's not really dark arts requires higher quality pcb fab and assembly. Using an RF module thus lowers the manufacturing requirements for the main board. If the RF is on the main board switching board houses often causes problems. You can also treat an RF module as a component and test it separately. Parametric testing RF as part of a full design is problematic. And RF systems appear to fail QA at a high rate than digital/analog circuits. And also can share the same module across different products.

katmannthree 7y ago

The boards are a great reference point for developing a product with a given component. Any time I make something with an MCU I pick up a couple of dev boards just like this to learn from. It's basically a ``known good'' configuration and really handy for prototyping and debugging hardware issues.

nrp 7y ago

Typically, boards like this would only be used for prototyping. It's a dead simple system and there is basically nothing of value in the board itself for production use. Any design using the same microcontroller would just incorporate it directly rather than integrating an extra board. That differs from more complex boards like an RPi Compute Module or an RF module. On those, you might take advantage of the existing high-layer-count board attached to a simpler, low-layer-count board, avoid needing to redesign systems that have signal integrity or RF challenges, or utilize existing certifications around emissions.

penagwin 7y ago
> or utilize existing certifications around emissions. This is one of the biggest reasons for an extra board for RF modules. RF is black magic where you REALLY need to know what you're doing to develop your own board, and if it's not in an already certified module then you have to have your product pass FCC certifications (costing a lot of money)
- dfox 7y ago
  Very often even the layer count is an issue. For perfect example see almost any brand name japanese AV DVD/DVR combo which has giant single layer board with only passives, connectors and links which holds small subboard with bunchs of (fc)BGAs and somewhat incredible layer count. On the other hand for small scale devices not only certification comes into play but also availability and cost. There are niche devices that simply use some Arduino-ish board as a component, because the board is easier to source and, more importantly, cheaper than the MCU on it, personaly I view that as bad design and good reason to use some non-AVR MCU, but that is how it is.
- Gibbon1 7y ago
  There are a couple of issues. PCB and and Assembly for an RF circuit while it's not really dark arts requires higher quality pcb fab and assembly. Using an RF module thus lowers the manufacturing requirements for the main board. If the RF is on the main board switching board houses often causes problems. You can also treat an RF module as a component and test it separately. Parametric testing RF as part of a full design is problematic. And RF systems appear to fail QA at a high rate than digital/analog circuits. And also can share the same module across different products.