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8. Electronics design

This week is about electronics and builds up on the previous week and and 6.

Group assignment:

  • Use the test equipment in your lab to observe the operation of a microcontroller circuit board
  • Send a PCB out to a board house

Individual assignment:

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

Tools: CNC desktop milling machine, KiCAD, SVG-PCB

Materials: PCB, electronic components, microprocessor

The group assignment

KiCad tutorial

I worked a bit with KiCad during Week 4 when I installod the application, since then a new major version 8.0 has appeared. Now it should be easier to import/export the designs and interact with reacher libraries of symbols and footprints.

KiCad is a bundle of applications which started as independent programs that now have evolved into components communicating with each other.

different pictograms Understand the workflow. common director

Project manager window

Schematics

Selected objects are moved by pressing M and rotated by pressing R. The G hotkey (drag) can also be used to move objects. For moving unconnected symbols, G and M behave identically, but for symbols with wires attached, G moves the symbol and keeps the wires attached, while M moves the symbol and leaves the wires behind. Selected objects can be deleted with the Del key.

Tutorial schematics

  • Adding Symbols
  • Footprint Assignment
  • Adding Symbols
  • Adding Symbols

Electrical Rules Check

Bill of Materials

PCB Editor

The drawing process is organized in layers

Ctrl + Tab switch between layers

  • Importing Changes From Schematic
  • Drawing A Board Outline
  • Placing Footprints
  • Routing Tracks
  • Placing Copper Zones
  • Design Rule Checking
  • 3D Viewer
  • Fabrication Outputs

The design of the robot control board

Producing the board

Testing

Simulating the board

SVG-PCB

References

Fab people followed for this lesson

Info and tutorials

Dictionary

  • Silkscreen - the layer on a PCB board which show the name, types of the components and positions, it is ussually the last layer printed on the board. It is relevant for boards fabricated by the PCB printing houses.
  • Via: It is a connection between different copper layers (front and back) consits of a hole through teh board.
  • Ratsnest: guiding the thin (blue) lines indicating connections between pads. They help determining how best position footprints relative to other footprints.

Files