6. Electronics Design
The assignment this week is to, as a group, use the test equipment in our lab to observe the operation of a microcontroller and circuit board. For the individual assignment we had to design a development board to interact and communicate with an embedded microcontroller.
3D Printed Object
For this week I wanted to just make a basic but very functional circuit board, having all the normal pin connections but also one pin for each of the two power outputs and three connections to ground. I also added an LED that will show that the board is on and another LED connected to a button. I started by downloading the circuit design software, KiCad, the download decumantation of which I have linked bellow.
Then I opened the skematic design menu and started sketching out how I wanted the board to be shaped.
Next, I uploaded the skematic to the PCB, it worked very well but I learned theough the "suggestion lines", light blue lines that show which components are connected, that my original skematic was not set up correctly. This lead to a long and intricate process of trial and error until I finalized my skematic.
After the skematic was finished and all the "suggestion lines" pointed to the right commponents I started connecting the components. As you can see I used the space under the ESP microcontroller and a few "bridges", 0-Ohm resistors, to make paths that would otherwise conflict with eachother.
I then exported my PCB blueprint into Adobe Illistrate to create the outer milling cut to create the overall shape and cut it from the board when we mill.
Personal Logo
This week I also designed a personal logo I will be putting on all of my projects moving forward. The thought process behind the design is that I have an interest in transportation tecnology. Whether it be on land, in the air, in and on water, or in space, it just facinates me. So I though of symbols or designs that represent travel or transportation, finally resting on a Compass Rose. For the color I just chose my favorate color, sky blue.
Group Page:
Useful links
None for this week.