Building an Orone Mini: part 1, introduction
I’m building a Maple Mini clone called the Orone Mini S8H as practice for building an Open Source EEG board. The Orone Mini is a board designed by Garry Bulmer in the UK. It’s software compatible with the Maple Mini but designed to be more easily made at home by hobbyists – it’s a two-layer board, and mainly uses larger 1206 size SMD components, on one side of the board only. Here’s a couple of articles about it: Improving the Maple Mini Part 1, Improving the Maple Mini Part 2. Here’s the Maple Mini specifications.
I got the boards made at the fabulous OSH Park:
This board uses a different mini-USB connector than the Maple, with a couple of tabs that make the board connection sturdier. I forgot to pick the right connector variant in Eagle when I submitted the board – so instead of slots for the connector’s tabs, there are a couple of plated holes that the connector won’t fit into. I had to get out the Proxon Micromot (Dremel-like tool) to router out two slots:
I’ll post updates on my progress here as I go along – so stay tuned!