Rachel Legerski - Fab Academy 2015

Electronics Design

Week 6 Assignment

The assignment for this week is to redraw the echo hello-world board, add a button and LED, and make it. I will have to mill and populate a printed circuit board (PCB) and post it on the class page.

Having a limited knowledge about circuits (think "Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?" quiz show), I know that I am in for another challenge this week. I've taught basic cicuitry but this seems pretty complicated. This is a little beyond the Snap Circuits that I use in class!

So my goal for this week is to create my own circuit board. Looking back to my experience with "Andy" and "Valentin", I am hoping that I can recall all the steps to create, mill and solder the PCB. I am not going to worry about the programming...yet.

Struggles

  1. Eagle! Another new program and new commands to learn.
  2. Trying to understand how the schematic relates to the board.
  3. The size of our computer screens makes this even more challenging. Note to self: You're gonna need a bigger monitor!.
  4. Learning some shortcuts and trying not to make this more complicated than it has to be!

    5. Persistence and Success

    Eagle CAD is a program that I want to master. It is so challenging. I actually laughed when I found out that Eagle stands for Easily Applicable Graphical Layout Editor...easy for some but not for me! Here is the image that I started with.

    Design:

    1. I started by opening a new project in Eagle.
    2. We had to add the Fab Library so that we could access the components that we wanted for our circuit.
    3. I thought that this step was easy. I matched up the diagram that I got from our Fab Academy page and just clicked and brought over the pieces I needed.

    4. Next, I connected wires to my components so that I could label and name them. Scott showed me that if you did it this way, the program connected the parts you label to each other. That was a relief because I was beginning to get confused as I tried to draw wires connecting each end myself. What a mess!


    5. When I was finished, I clicked on the little yellow icon that checks for you. I like that you can click on the arrows and it will show you what you need to review. I DO NOT like that you can't recheck again (at least, with this version)
    6. Once I fixed my errors, I exported my schematic to a board. Scott showed me how to group the parts and drag them to the work area.
    7. Once I got to this step, I started by dragging components to where I wanted them. Sometimes I had to rotate a component to make sure that it was in the right direction

    8. The next step was to autoroute my design. The program looks for efficient ways to route the board. When it was finished, I was able to reroute somethings so that I could give myself some more room.
    9. Once the design was complete and ready to go, we milled it.

    10. On to soldering!

      11. Project Files:

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