8. Electronic design¶

Group assignment :¶

Use your laboratory test equipment to observe the operation of a microcontroller PCB
Send a PCB to a board of directors

To see our group assignment click here

Individual assignment:¶

Use an EDA tool to design a development board to interact and communicate with an embedded microcontroller, produce and test it
Extra credit: try another design workflow
Extra credit: design a package for it
Extra credit: simulate its operation

Kicad¶

KiCad is an open-source electronics design software used primarily for printed circuit board (PCB) design. It provides a comprehensive set of tools for electronic schematic design, PCB design, symbol and component model creation, as well as the generation of manufacturing files for PCB production.

Installation of bilbiothèques (libraries)¶

Download the Fab library Kicad Librairy on Wiki of Seeeduino xiao.

Go to wiki: http://wiki.seeedstudio.com/Seeeduino-XIAO/#resourses
Go to resource
Download Kicad libraries

Import symbol library into Kicad¶

Open your Kicad project
Go to Preferences > Manage symbol libraries
Go to the Project-specific libraries tab
Click on the + button below
Configure the library nickname and path (by choosing the library you download from the wiki, called: …\Seeeduino XIAO KICAD\Seeeduino XIAO.lib)
Then press OK

Circuit design¶

Open Eagle, click on File > New project
Open file .SCh of your project
Press the A shortcut by clicking on the Place symbol button
Type XIAO in the search bar, then XIAO appears
Press OK to place XIAO in the diagram

Following the same symbol import procedure, you should obtain the following

👇👇👇👇👇👇👇👇👇

NOTE : We used 3-pin connectors to drive two servomotors and a screw_Terminal to read the value of an HC-SR04.

Let’s take a short break before continuing to briefly introduce the xiao card.

Xiao rp2040¶

Before we started designing our circuit, we carried out a study of the XIAO microcontroller to select the pins we needed for our project and the basic components required for its operation. We began by consulting the XIAO datasheet, available here. The image below shows the board pinout.

If you don’t master the software, it’s no good, but you can help yourself by reading the documentation. All the information you need is here.

Footprints¶

Once we’ve drawn the schematic, we’ll start tracing the footprints. To do this, you can click on the tab circled in red but for us, we double-click on the symbol. Then click on the symbol circled in red, choose your imprint and confirm.