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This instructable will show you how to easily modify a readily available plastic case to hold and protect your AVR Dragon PCB.
Atmel promotes their AVR Dragon as a low cost development product tool for use with their AVR microcrontollers. While the product does come in a fancy red cardboard box, unlike all the other AVR hardware debug/emulation development tools, the Dragon is sold as a single PCB with no cables or even a protective case.
Atmel does not even offer the option of buying the product with a protective case.
The customer is on his own as to how to best do this.
Before going any further, I must say that the Dragon has a tremendous amount flexibility and huge number of features and options - almost too many in my opinion.
As a result, there is no practical way to build a case that could provide easy access to every single combination of features and capabilities.
This instructable will focus on the creation of a protective case that wraps the Dragon in as small of a package as possible. As a result, when the enclosure is closed, functionality is primarily limited to that available from ISP or JTAG connectors, essentially giving you similar functionality to that of the JTAG ICE MKII, but only for the 8 bit microntrollers, and at a fraction of the cost.
Atmel promotes their AVR Dragon as a low cost development product tool for use with their AVR microcrontollers. While the product does come in a fancy red cardboard box, unlike all the other AVR hardware debug/emulation development tools, the Dragon is sold as a single PCB with no cables or even a protective case.
Atmel does not even offer the option of buying the product with a protective case.
The customer is on his own as to how to best do this.
Before going any further, I must say that the Dragon has a tremendous amount flexibility and huge number of features and options - almost too many in my opinion.
As a result, there is no practical way to build a case that could provide easy access to every single combination of features and capabilities.
This instructable will focus on the creation of a protective case that wraps the Dragon in as small of a package as possible. As a result, when the enclosure is closed, functionality is primarily limited to that available from ISP or JTAG connectors, essentially giving you similar functionality to that of the JTAG ICE MKII, but only for the 8 bit microntrollers, and at a fraction of the cost.
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Signing UpStep 1Different Dragons and Different Cases
When I first got my Dragon, I noticed that it was a new revision of the product. All the versions of the Dragon board that I had seen had no mounting holes in the PCB. The version of the board that I received had 4 mounting holes - which I thought would make the task of putting the Dragon in a protective a case easier.
That said, I was also looking for a case, that could still work with the older version of the board using a hole-less attachment option such as double stick tape.
The biggest problem in locating a case for the Dragon is the size of PCB. Many of the off the shelf cases are very similar in dimensions to each other and none of them that I was able to locate (and I looked at MANY) were an exact fit - especially for the mounting holes. I even asked Atmel directly on their support site if they designed the Dragon for a specific case. - I got nothing back from them. Nearly all of the cases were either too large for what I wanted or just slightly too small in one dimension. Also complicating matters is that since the Dragon has status LEDs on the PCB I was looking for a case that had a translucent plastic option so that the LEDs could be viewed through the case rather than have to deal with any sort of light pipe.
I did manage to find two cases that could be coaxed into working.
Serpac H-Series H-65: http://www.serpac.com/Products/Hseries/h-65.aspx
Photo: http://media.digikey.com/photos/Serpac%20Photos/A-65%20TR%20GY.jpg
Dimension Drawing: http://www.serpac.com/Products/Hseries/drawings/h-65.pdf
Hammond 1553 (1553BTBUBK) 4.615x3.109x0.945 : http://www.hammondmfg.com/1553colors.htm
3D Dimension Drawing: http://www.hammondmfg.com/pdf/1553B.pdf
These cases are readily available including places like Digikey, and Mouser who also sell the Dragon.
At the time I bought them, the Hammond is about half the cost of the Serpac.
Serpac runs about $13 and the Hammond about $7.
For Translucent Colors, the Hammond only offers blue, while the Serpac offers translucent gray, red, green, or blue. The Hammond has rubber along each side. The Hammond case is also a bit thicker and sturdier plastic than the Serpac.
Both come with several battery & door options (which were not used for this project) and the Hammond 1553 comes in two different sizes. Also some of the pictures in the online catalogs have photos of the wrong colored case (the text description is correct). So be very careful when ordering.
Now all that said about the translucent case, there is an alternative if you really want another color or don't like the translucent look. Since these cases have replaceable face plates and the Dragon LEDs are near the edge of the PCB, you could replace the face plate with a clear plate which still allows you to see the LEDs. That way if you want black, or that bright red or safety yellow Hammond case, you can get it and still see the LEDs.
NOTE: The clear panels are harder to find as they are often not carried by online merchants.
That said, I was also looking for a case, that could still work with the older version of the board using a hole-less attachment option such as double stick tape.
The biggest problem in locating a case for the Dragon is the size of PCB. Many of the off the shelf cases are very similar in dimensions to each other and none of them that I was able to locate (and I looked at MANY) were an exact fit - especially for the mounting holes. I even asked Atmel directly on their support site if they designed the Dragon for a specific case. - I got nothing back from them. Nearly all of the cases were either too large for what I wanted or just slightly too small in one dimension. Also complicating matters is that since the Dragon has status LEDs on the PCB I was looking for a case that had a translucent plastic option so that the LEDs could be viewed through the case rather than have to deal with any sort of light pipe.
I did manage to find two cases that could be coaxed into working.
Serpac H-Series H-65: http://www.serpac.com/Products/Hseries/h-65.aspx
Photo: http://media.digikey.com/photos/Serpac%20Photos/A-65%20TR%20GY.jpg
Dimension Drawing: http://www.serpac.com/Products/Hseries/drawings/h-65.pdf
Hammond 1553 (1553BTBUBK) 4.615x3.109x0.945 : http://www.hammondmfg.com/1553colors.htm
3D Dimension Drawing: http://www.hammondmfg.com/pdf/1553B.pdf
These cases are readily available including places like Digikey, and Mouser who also sell the Dragon.
At the time I bought them, the Hammond is about half the cost of the Serpac.
Serpac runs about $13 and the Hammond about $7.
For Translucent Colors, the Hammond only offers blue, while the Serpac offers translucent gray, red, green, or blue. The Hammond has rubber along each side. The Hammond case is also a bit thicker and sturdier plastic than the Serpac.
Both come with several battery & door options (which were not used for this project) and the Hammond 1553 comes in two different sizes. Also some of the pictures in the online catalogs have photos of the wrong colored case (the text description is correct). So be very careful when ordering.
Now all that said about the translucent case, there is an alternative if you really want another color or don't like the translucent look. Since these cases have replaceable face plates and the Dragon LEDs are near the edge of the PCB, you could replace the face plate with a clear plate which still allows you to see the LEDs. That way if you want black, or that bright red or safety yellow Hammond case, you can get it and still see the LEDs.
NOTE: The clear panels are harder to find as they are often not carried by online merchants.
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I'm considering flipping the board around in the case to allow a 10pin and 6pin connector to mate up to the "flat" panel so the cable can be removed.
It requires building a small adapter board that plugs in to the header pins
and holds the 10pin and 6pin headers.
I found out that the blue plastic CD jewel cases match the plastic panel fairly well including texture so I can cut out a new plastic panel from an old jewel case.
Maybe some day.....
Anyway, glad you found the project useful.
--- bill