This February 17 was the Electronics production class and I found it interesting that I didn't understand even half of the session. I have no experience in anything electronic and this is the first time I see board topics so I'm sure this week will be a real adventure. On Wednesday I decided to volunteer for the second time to expose how difficult it was for our team to solve the task with the broken machine, I think when you have challenges like this we learn more as we test ourselves with problem solving.
Anyway I know it will be fun and I will keep on working hard to get the best results, I thank once again to the Barcelona team for all the support from afar and of course to my heart team Fab Lab Peru. π
Second time as a volunteer
My experience
General concepts
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Voltage: Electrical voltage or potential difference (also called voltage) is a physical quantity that quantifies the difference in electrical potential between two points. It can also be defined as the work per unit charge exerted by the electric field on a charged particle to move it between two given positions. It can be measured with a voltmeter. Its unit in the International System of Units (SI) is the volt.
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Conductive materials: Conductive materials are those that offer little resistance to the passage of electricity. Electrons can circulate freely through the material because they are weakly bound to the atoms and can therefore conduct electricity. For example: aluminum, bronze, nickel, gold.
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LED: A light-emitting diode or LED (also known as a light-emitting diode) is a light source consisting of a semiconductor material with two terminals.
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PCB: A printed circuit board is a circuit whose components and conductors are contained within a mechanical structure. Conductive features include copper traces, terminals, heat sinks or flat conductors. The mechanical structure is made of insulating laminated material sandwiched between layers of conductive material. The overall structure is plated and covered with a non-conductive solder mask and a printing screen for electronic component legend location.
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Electronics components: Electronic components are the devices that make up the circuits that make appliances that we use in our day-to-day life work, such as cell phones, televisions or hair dryers. They come encapsulated in ceramic, metal or plastic. They usually have two or more metal terminals or pins.
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Resistors: These are the components in charge of "opposing" the flow of electric current. They are in charge of slowing down or attenuating it to prevent it from flowing without any control. Their resistance capacity is measured in ohms (Ξ©) and their power, i.e. the amount of electricity they can control without burning out, in watts (W).
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Capacitors: These are found near resistors and can store an electrical charge temporarily. There are many varieties, but the most common are electrolytic and ceramic disc capacitors. Their capacity is measured in microfarads (ΞΌF).
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Diodes: These elements allow electric current to flow in one direction only, as long as the positive voltage is applied to the diode terminal known as the anode and the negative to the terminal called the cathode. If it is done the other way around, the electric current will not pass.
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Transistors: These are one of the most important devices in electronics and have three terminals. Voltage is applied to the base, which controls the current passing through the other two terminals, the collector and the emitter.
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Integrated circuits: This is one of the most special electronic elements as they contain, in themselves, an entire electrical circuit. The most modern electronic devices, such as computers or cell phones, are built from this type of element. Although this represents an advance, it is also true that it makes the reuse of components and their repair more difficult, and makes us more dependent on the technical services of large companies. A fact that is closely related to planned obsolescence.
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Integrated circuits: An anode and a cathode are the two types of terminals in an electronic device. The cathode is the terminal where current leaves an electronic device. The anode is the terminal where current flows into an electronic device. Electrical current is the amount of charge passing a fixed point in a unit of time.
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AVR: AVR is a family of microcontrollers developed since 1996 by Atmel, acquired by Microchip Technology in 2016. These are modified Harvard architecture 8-bit RISC single-chip microcontrollers.
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RISC: RISC-V (pronounced "Risk-Five") is a free hardware instruction set architecture (ISA) based on a RISC (reduced instruction set) design.
(Source: Wikipedia.com)
First steps
To understand this assignment
- The
first step I had to take, since
I am not familiar with these electronics issues, was to do a lot of
research. It is important to know the why of the processes in order to understand how to develop what we want to have as a result. Thanks to many tutorials and interaction with the equipment I was able to experience many things before moving on to theory.
My recommendation is that for those who are as proactive as me and don't like the theoretical part, look for tutorials to make DIY models and test them. π
- Well, the first way
to investigate was to open some things at home that had some logic of using
boards and LEDs. I had never done it before but thanks to this I could see and touch live how is the internal structure of objects like a smart light bulb, a simple lamp and a mouse.
Smart focus
Smart focus
- I found it very interesting to see the circuits and
not understand anything, π’ so to familiarize myself I searched the internet for some similar systems and tried to see the similarities.
Disassembled mouse
Disassembled mouse
- Thanks to my broken mouse I could take some time to open it and
explore it internally before taking it to the trash, now that I know better the electronic components and I know that they can be
recycled I will not throw anything away as I was always doing, after having observed it I tried to identify all the possible components. Here I show a
graphic I made. πͺ
My first graphic
- This exercise
helped me to know what I had to understand first, when I saw some leds on the boards it occurred to me to look for how to turn on a led since I had never done it, this gave me very good results since
I could understand some concepts like resistance, led, voltage, etc. To be able to build a board and understand its components I investigated in many ways the
sequences and connections, this method can help a lot to people like me who are not engineers or knowledgeable about the electronics part.
After understanding the
conceptual part of the circuits I ventured to perform
two experiments, the first was to light an LED with the basics such as an old battery and a resistor. Thanks to the Fab Lab in Lima I was able to get some components and I took them home. The first test was
great, for the first time in my life I turned on an LED.
Components LED and Resistor
Stripping wires
Connecting positive and negative
Β‘Turning on the led!
- This event was amazing for me, I really
enjoyed solving this little challenge so I continued experimenting. Thanks to
Hayashi Mateo, my partner from Fab Lab Peru, I have in my possession an arduino trainer, this allows me to know the basics in the connections on an electronic board.
Fabino, the real name of this marvel, has a breadboard so I gave it the first use trying to light an LED but this time with a different logic. π
Blue LED
Green LED
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Fabino is a great trainer! He helped me a lot to understand from the beginning the programming I can give him to turn on leds, to put a text on a LCD, to use sound sensors, motion sensors, etc. This works with a program called
Mblock, it is very similar to Scratch, for beginners it is perfect, here I show you some practices.
Programming with blocks
Programming with blocks
- Another
very good idea for
beginners in electronics is the free software
Tinkercad, this program is completely free and you don't need to download it, it has a space for creating 3D designs but also one where you can learn about
electronic circuits. I really liked to start this exploration because virtually you can practice with your components and realize the results before doing it physically, this certainly helps a lot to know the results you can get and improve your proposals.
I recommend it! π
Exploring with a protoboard
Looking for components
- After these first explorations I ventured to try the practice of
welding, it is the
first time in my life that I go through this experience. The result was not the best but the emotion was at its peak, thanks to the Fab Academy I am doing things that I had never done before and
I really like it.
Connection of LED to cable
Soldering but with burnt wire
- Definitely with this first attempt I understood that soldering requires a lot of practice, it is
important to reach a point of fineness in order not to burn the tin or the components due to the temperature of the soldering iron. Because of this and thanks to my friend
Walter from Honduras I did an exercise that he recommended me. I got a
melamine board, some nails and a UTP cable, I organized them every 5 centimeters creating a kind of mesh and soldered point to point the heads of the nails with tin. This exercise was very good, it helped me to understand the best way to place the solder and to have better precision. I highly recommend it,
Thank you Walter! π₯°
-Thanks to all these
practices I felt more familiar with the concepts and components that we are using, for those who just have knowledge about electronics like me I will tell you that you must have a lot of
patience but above all willingness to learn and to solve the challenges that you have in front of you. πͺ