An open-source UFBGA µ-board for wearable devices

This paper presents the development of an open-source, low-sized, BGA microcontroller breakout board, that can be used for the development of wearable and cyber-physical prototypes. The board is based on the low power, 8-bit, ATtiny20-CCU Microchip AVR microcontroller. The ATtiny20-CCU can be programmed without bootloader, using the Atmel Tiny Programming Interface (TPI), instead of In-System Programming (ISP). The C code used to program the microcontroller can be written and compiled using the Microchip Studio freeware platform. The ATtiny20-CCU Ultra Fine-pitch Ball Grid Array (UFBGA) packaging technology allows the shrinkage of the conceived Electroless Nickel-Immersion Gold (ENIG) Printed Circuit Board (PCB) to a size of only 15.5 × 13 mm. Its low cost also makes it a viable option for developing many educational electronic projects, especially for Instrumentation and Assistive Technology. The contribution of this paper is mainly the hardware prototype design, the PCB manufacturing, building and test of a very low-sized open source µ-breakout PCB board, for wearable Instrumentation applications, towards the emergent Society/Industry 5.0.