Your trusty PCB production service is taking a big step! Effective today, Fab is powered by AISLER, a smart and affordable electronics manufacturing service.Yes, Fab has always been that, but with the support of our new partner, this will improve on all levels:
Smart: Fab now automatically renders high-res previews of your Fritzing files, so it’s much easier to check for mistakes. Plus it acts as a repository for your projects, enabling you to revise and share.
Affordable: The prices per cm2 are radically lowered, the checking fee is gone, shipping is free from 30€ – and you will get 3 copies per default. (Example: 1 Arduino Shield with the old Fab used to cost 42€ when ordering from Germany, now it’s 31€ and you’ll get 3!)
Manufacturing: The PCB is of even higher quality (three times as precise and with gold contacts) and still proudly made in Germany. Very soon you’ll be able to order parts alongside the PCB, and more services are on the roadmap.
The guys at AISLER made this an easy choice for us. Not only do they offer these excellent specs, but they also share the same friendly maker attitude all the while putting quality first. They are also based in Germany, in the up and coming Euregio area at the Dutch border.And they’re on a mission to build the production service we always wanted: The PCB is only the first step, next is parts, and eventually you’ll be able to order full projects - even assembled if you like. The ultimate goal is to create a maker market where you will get a share when somebody else produces your designs. A live preview of your board (Thanks to NITOS for providing these beautiful board designs)
With every change one has to say goodbye to a couple of things one has come to love. The black on white design will be replaced by the more standard white on green (aka “professional looks”). We made sure it’s beyond what you get elsewhere, with matte green finish and golden pads! Give it a spin at fab.fritzing.org – we hope you’ll enjoy the new service!
Finally, here's a fresh release of fritzing, coming with a nice set of new features. Head on over to fritzing.org/download to grab it.
Here's what's new:
Continuously updated parts library
The fritzing parts library is now stored online at github and is automatically checked
for updates on every launch. This means you will now get new parts (or fixes) in the moment when they are created. No need to wait for the next Fritzing release to get new parts anymore!
And we are actually using git itself inside of fritzing to do these updates, so this opens up many other use cases in the future, like for example direct user contributions.
Fritzing now looks properly on High-DPI (aka Retina) displays on all platforms. It's not really high-res but scaling nicely according to the higher screen resolution. No more eye squinting with your fancy 4K screen!
Easier handling of self-created parts
Custom / self-made parts and bins used to be stored in a hidden location on your hard
drive, which made it really annoying to edit them with an external tool such as Illustrator
or a text editor.
They are now conveniently located in your ~/Documents/Fritzing folder for easy access!
Load/Save uncompressed fritzing files (.fz)
You can now alternatively save your fritzing sketches as an uncompressed set of files (.fz
plus additional custom parts etc). This allows for proper versioning with systems like git or svn. For regular use, we still recommend using the standard .fzz format, which by the way is just a zip bundle of these files.
Thanks to Sergio Oller (zeehio) for this contribution!
File type associations & icons
fzz, fzb, fzp, etc. now also have shiny file icons on Mac OS X (thanks to scribblemaniac)
and Ubuntu Linux (thanks to el-j). To get them to actually show up, you will need to wait a little on Mac for them to override the cache, and on Linux you have to run the install-fritzing.sh script.
New Parts
Loads of new parts, many of them contributed, and all revised by Fabian Althaus (el-j):
Lots of new SparkFun parts, thanks to support from SparkFun:
OMRON G5LE and NVF4-2 relays, thanks to tomaskovacik
MPX2010 pressure sensor, thanks to Knutse
MPX4250AP pressure sensor, thanks to Old Grey
174917 DENSO ECU-socket, thanks to Old Grey
Rotary Switch 12 position 1 pole, thanks to Old Grey
4060 counter/divider, thanks to neutmute
LM124-324 Quad Opamp, thanks to Knutse
Hi-Link HLK-PM01 power module, thanks to inahas
LTC3105 step-up DC/DC converter
Refined ruler design, thanks to duff2013
New/updated Translations
Czech, thanks to Vasekdvor
German, thanks to Atalanttore and aknoerig
Italian, thanks to Gianpaolo Macario
Polish, thanks to jacekjaros
Portuguese, thanks to Bruno Ramalhete
Spanish, thanks to bazza
Turkish, thanks to Kaan Özdinçer
Vietnamese, thanks to Duyệt Đinh Xuân
..and various smaller improvements and fixes, including contributions from Duane Johnson, Luke Benstead, Nicolas Raynaud, scribblemaniac and duff2013. Thanks!
There are a zillion books that make use of Fritzing to illustrate circuits, but this one is the first on fritzing itself. We're honored that the one and only Simon Monk, author of many a maker book, took it up and created the ultimate guide for using fritzing to "take your electronics project from prototype to product." We provided technical review for the book, so you can be sure it's using all the tricks.
It does a really great job at giving a quickstart introduction. Then it walks you through each of Breadboard/Schematic/PCB view in detail, and also gives you background tips on approaching electronics projects in general, reading datasheets, etc. The second half of the book focuses on PCB design and production all the way to testing and distribution. It's all very thorough and keeps a great balance between bird's eye and detail discussion.
So it's not just a software reference, but a really practical handbook on creating prototypes and using Fritzing as the central tool for that. All in all, "Fritzing for Inventors" might be a great holiday read.
Here's the full table of contents (the one on the publisher's website seems to be from a draft version):
The good old forum that has lasted us since 2009 has finally been replaced by a shiny new one. Please head over to https://forum.fritzing.organd help make it such a friendly and lively place as with the old one.
We have selected the fantastic Discourse as the new forum's engine, that we found to do a great job at nurturing a community in places like OpenFrameworks or Particle. It's interesting to see how something as simple as a discussion board has evolved since back in 2009. Tools like phpBB provided a ton of features, but it totally overloaded the user interface. Discourse also provides a lot of functionality, but it's all focused on keeping your participation in discussions simple and easy. Plus it helps with community building by letting you build up your reputation.
You can use your existing fritzing.org login, but your profile will start blank–we didn't find a good way to migrate the old forum content, because the systems are too different. You can find the old forum's archive here, and it will remain a valuable resource.
