Electronics Design

According to Wikipedia, Electronic Design Automation also referred to as electronic computer-aided design (ECAD), is a category of software tools for designing electronic systems such as integrated circuits and printed circuit boards.

Task for Week 6

Group Assignment: - Using the test equipment in your lab to observe the operation of a microcontroller circuit board
Individual Assignment: - Designing a development board to interact and communicate with an embedded microcontroller.; - Extra credit: Trying another design workflow, make a case for it and simulate its operation.

Group Assignment

Link to our group assignment is here

This week, my job for the group assignment was to take photographs and videos of the work we were doing
I helped in finding the right components to carry out our group assignment.
I also used the multimeter to see the difference in voltage drop in different resistors.

Individual Assignment

This week we are asked to design a development board to interact and communicate with an embedded microcontroller.

I've decided to use Autodesk Eagle as a designing software since I'm little bit familiar and comfortable using it since I've used it during my Pre-Fab class.

I've decided to use ATTINY1614 as microcontroller, Button as input and LEDs as output.So the button will light the LED.

Eagle Software

According to Autodesk, Eagle is a Electronic Design Automation(EDA) software that lets printed circuit board(PCB) designers seamlessly connect schematic diagrams, component placement, PCB routing and comprehensive library content.
I used Eagle to draw my board.
I had already installed the Eagle software in my PC. Here is the link if you want to download.
After installing, I opened the eagle software and created a new file. To do that open eagle software → Click on files → new → Project and name your project.

Now once the project is created, go to files → new → schematics to create the schematic diagram of the circuit.

You can get the Fab Library from here

Next, to add the fab library to the project, Go to Library → Open Library Manager → click on browse → select the fab library → click use.

I did not find the ATTINY1614 in the Fab library. Had to search for it online. Finally came across a documentation of a previous student and the link for downloading the symbol and footprint is here

Once I was done adding library, I then started to design my board. To add the components, type "add" on the text bar. Once we enter then a pop-up box displaying all the components shows up. Then search for Fablab and Fab, add the required components from there.

For making my PCB board, I used the following components.

Once I added all the components, I renamed each of the components and made the electrical connections.

Referred ATTINY1614 pinout.

Also Referred Attiny1614 board for electrical connections.

Then was done with the schematic design.

After the schematic designing, run the ERC(electrical rule check).ERC warns us about any missing values of the components or any violations.

To go to "ERC", go to "Tools" and then select "ERC" or short cut is "Ctrl+Shift+E"

For components with no known value, we can approve it and go on.

Then generated the board design from the schematic design as shown below.

Once I generated the board design, I moved all the components to the design window of the board design. I started arranging the components based on the best possible fit. Then I manually routed the connections.

There were a couple of design rules I had to keep in mind when routing. First, I had to change the trace width to 10. I could do that by clicking the width option in the task bar above the design window.

Our instructor informed us to ensure that no traces/routes run in between the controller pins and no more than 2 routes should run under any components.

I started routing and it took hours for me to optimize my board design to 100%. I added 0Ohms resistor to do a final routing between gnd since I couldnt find any other path way.

After that, run the DRC(Design Rule Check) and I could see some errors.

Corrected the errors and some airwires could be ignored hence approved them.

Following is the final board design I made.

Next I exported the board design as .png file. Before exporting, I removed the labelings on the components. This needs to be done to avoid issues when milling the pcb. To do that first Go to view option→ Select layer setting.