Electronic Design

Group project:

  • use the test equipment in your lab to observe the operation of a microcontroller circuit board
  • Individual project:
  • redraw an echo hello-world board, add (at least) a button and LED (with current-limiting resistor) check the design rules, make it, and test it extra credit: simulate its operation+

    • Group Assignment

    Decided to go with digital multimeter since its readily available for me as an individual

    some of the tests decided to do is are as follows

  • Continuity of copper traces

    short circuit test

    open tests

    • all the above were done using the digital multimeter

    Circuit Design Eagle board to design

    I decided to go with the ATtinyISP programmer which looks like the following

    but the i decided to add a bit of challange to myself and add arduino to it. In such a way it will be an intergration of the two

    software to use

    i decided to go with Eagle software

    This is because i found it easy to interact with the components and everthing on its library

    KIcad

    KIcad was another software that i interacted with, this was almost the same with eagle software. the only difference i noticed it was that adding libraries was a bit hard for me atleast.

  • For learning pursoses i decided to design two pcb boards then continue with one to etching and programing it

    • First design

    Before designing i had to interogate the board again and know which components as well know which trace goes where and here is a groupd of componts i was able to list by only observing

  • the list is as below:

    • Eagle design

    i started by creating am empty schematic and placing the components ub the working area and later saving as Attiny arduino shield

    the i moved on to drawing the circuit of where each component connected to

    And the final schematic looked like the following

    I moved on to designing the board and decided it should look exactly or almost the same with the one i was using as reference at this point i realized that there was the same done project the same as i was thinking in line. the file is found at github here is thelink

    i decided to use this as reference and continue designing since i was far gone

    i continued to arrange the footprints of each components and as well draw the traces

    this is where i learned about auto routining which i was advised against

    The final board looked like this

    reference

    comparing the designed with the original

    designedreference

    this gave me a deeper understanding of design rules of the pcb and it was a deeper tutorial to follow

    you can get the files here of the original designed files

    Design files

    Second design

    After leraning on how to manuver on the eagle software i decided to go ahead and design what was required for the week which was:

    redraw an echo hello-world board, add (at least) a button and LED (with current-limiting resistor)

    First it was about finding components on eagle libraries and adding to sketch

    Proceeded on making tracess on the on the schematic and labbling each components as well as noting which components are available for use

    i proceed on to designing a pcb which is very easy(after larning tricks of eagle)

    which was developed after learning this trick of SCH/BRD button

    i continued to placing the footprinting and drawing the traces on working area

    afterword i went ahead and removed the excessive labbling to make sure there would be no shorting

    I saved this as pdf and printed it in a glossy paper which i used to traffer to pcb board

    i ttransfered it using the iron box

    as you can see this is not the most effecient way as it may come out well or some traced may be left on the paper during transer

    i continues to etch using the chemical i mixed during week 4

    this was the final product which was much better then what i got in week 4

    Electronic soldering

    i went ahead and looked out for Electronic:

  • ATtiny44 x 1
  • Resonator 20MHz x 1
  • Resistor 10K x 1
  • Capacitor 1uF x 1
  • FTDI x 1
  • ISP x 1
  • Resistor 100 ohm x 1
  • Button x 1
  • led x 1

    • i went ahead and did soldering

    you can get the files

    Design files

    This work was proceeding from week four and still developing

    Programing

    to program the board i used arduino IDE and make sure i did it correctly I used the following link

  • https://github.com/SpenceKonde/ATTinyCore/blob/master/Installation.md
    • for tutorial purposes. This was important because Arduino is diffrent from Attiny board

    Since i had arduino IDE in my laptop i went ahead to following the tutorial:

  • setting up the arduino IDE
  • setting the correct board for ATtiny45

    • After setting arduino IDE it was time to test simple code like blinking an LED to the board i had designed. Here is how i went through it:

  • blinking lED
    • i used the arduino example blink example avalable in the arduino ide and modified lo look the following this was the outcome of my trial.

    I found this way being easier for those who are starting in AVR programing since of there is interaction between with arduino IDE which has very basic and good and understanding of simple code

  • Back