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8. Electronics design

Group assignment:

  • Use the test equipment in your lab to observe the operation of a microcontroller circuit board(as a minimum, you should demonstrate the use of a multimeter and oscilloscope)

To see our group assignment click here

Individual assignment:

  • Design a development board to interact and communicate with an embedded microcontroller

  • extra credit: try another design workflow; make a case for it; Simulate its operation

For this week’s assignment, we’ve been asked to design a printed circuit board. I’m going to design a printed circuit board for my final project. To do this, I’ve used kiCad, an open source software package that you can download by clicking here.

DESIGN WITH kiCad

Download kiCad

To download click here

Then choose your operating system

Now that kiCad is installed, we can get started.

We’ll start by drawing the schematic of our circuit in kiCad, then trace the footprints and finally generate the files.

To begin with, we’re going to open kiCad.

When kiCad is opened, this window appears

Schematic drawing with kiCad

We’ll click on files and then on new project

We need to give our project a name and then register it. As shown below.

Now that we have our project registered, we can start drawing our schematic. To do this, click on the schema editor tool. As shown below.

Not so fast 🥵​🥵​🥵​🥵​: first we need to install the libraries that will provide us with all the components we need. click here to download the librairies.

To install

  • Clone or download this repository. You may rename the directory to fab.
  • Store it in a safe place such as ~/kicad/libraries or C:/kicad/libraries.
  • Run KiCad or open a KiCad .pro file.
  • Go to “Preferences / Manage Symbol Libraries” and add fab.kicad_sym as symbol library.
  • Go to “Preferences / Manage Footprint Libraries” and add fab.pretty as footprint library.

oufff that was hot 💆‍♀️​💆‍♀️​💆‍♀️​💆‍♀️​

We can continue

To select our components, we click on the add tool, then a list appears where we can choose our components, and finally click on ok. You can also click on the page it’s easier.

In 1 we have our component symbol in 2 we have our component footprint.

Be careful not to use components that don’t have a footprint, as this could complicate the task of tracing the footprints.

Our component has been successfully added to our sheet.

Once we’ve added all our components, we can connect them together using the connector tool.

Once the layout is complete, we can move on to the impression assignment. We select the footprints assignment tool.

Tracing footprints

On the left we have the list of all components, in the middle we have the list of components we’ve chosen, and on the right we have the list of available footprints. Now we need to assign the footprints. Once we have assigned the footprints, we can click on OK.

We now turn to the PCB. We’ll click on this tool as shown in the image.

  • fter drawing our schematic, we finalized the layout and then traced the outline of our circuit.

  • For the second circuit we proceeded in the same way except that on this one we added a text for that I invite you to follow the following steps

  • To add text

  • 1: Go to the “placer” tab

  • 2: Select the text tool

  • 3: In the text area we will write our text
  • 4: We can change the diaper, but in our case we kept it.
  • 5: Finish with “ok”.

Fils generating

We will now export the production files. To do this, follow the steps shown in the image. We have various options.

We are going to select the different layers >> then draw. Finally, we click on this drilling file to generate the drilling files.

To create our circuit with the monofab we will generate our .svg files. To do this, we need to follow the steps on the image.

RESULTAT

After generating the files, I cut my circuit with the monofab and used the mode CE software to set the parameters. For the fashion tutorial, please see my assignment for week 04 (electronic production).

RESULTAT

CIRCUIT TEST

We can test our circuit

Code 

   
 // Pin assigned to LEDs
const int LED1_PIN = 2;
const int LED2_PIN = 3;
const int LED3_PIN = 4;
const int LED4_PIN = 5;

void setup() {
  // Initializes LED pins in output mode
  pinMode(LED1_PIN, OUTPUT);
  pinMode(LED2_PIN, OUTPUT);
  pinMode(LED3_PIN, OUTPUT);
  pinMode(LED4_PIN, OUTPUT);
}

void loop() {
  // Flashes the first LED
  digitalWrite(LED1_PIN, HIGH);
  delay(100);
  digitalWrite(LED1_PIN, LOW);
  delay(100);

  // Flashes the second LED
  digitalWrite(LED2_PIN, HIGH);
  delay(100);
  digitalWrite(LED2_PIN, LOW);
  delay(100);

  // Flashes the third LED
  digitalWrite(LED3_PIN, HIGH);
  delay(100);
  digitalWrite(LED3_PIN, LOW);
  delay(100);

  // Flashes the fourth LED
  digitalWrite(LED4_PIN, HIGH);
  delay(100);
  digitalWrite(LED4_PIN, LOW);
  delay(100);
}

RESULTAT

WE HAVE FINISHED 👏👏 🥳🥳

THANK YOU FOR FOLLOWING THIS TUTORIAL 🤝🤝🤝

FILES

Last update: July 9, 2024