Tag Archives: PCB

03/15/17

Should you switch from EaglePCB to KiCad?

So I’ve been using EaglePCB for a number of years. I’ve designed and created some open source projects like my SV650 ECU Decoder and TeensyDSC. While I had a cheap ($79) commercial license for a one off commercial project I did, most of my work was done using the $169 “Maker” version for non-commercial use.

Then mid-2016, Eagle was bought by AutoDesk. I’ve only used one AutoDesk product before: Fusion360 which I really like. Sure, it’s not as good as SolidWorks, but I’ve designed parts for both CNC and 3D printing and they’ve come out great. And to top it off, AutoDesk is very gracious in it’s licensing terms- allowing makers like me to use it for free.

But recently Autodesk announced that EaglePCB was moving from perpetual licensing to subscription based. Simply put, this was not well received.
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03/14/17

Reverse engineering the SV650 SDS Protocol

So spent a bunch of the time in the garage this weekend working on reverse engineering the SDS protocol on the SV650. SDS is basically ISO9141 aka K-Line which something you often see in a car’s ODB-II port. Unfortunately, SDS is just different enough that you can’t use any commercial off the shelf ODB-II reader to read the messages. The way I have been going about this was pretty painful and taking a lot of time/effort to iterate over so I came up with a new tool chain.
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