6. Electronics design

This week I am going to take a look at some equipment used in electronics like a power supply, AVO-meter and an Oscillosope and take a look at what is going on. I will aslo design a extension board for Seeed with connections for each pin and some buttons, push and slide. Maybe I will have time to design a case around it.

Group assignment:

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

Individual assignment:

• use an EDA tool to design a development board that uses parts from the inventory to interact and communicate with an embedded microcontroller
• extra credit: try another design workflow
• extra credit: simulate your design
• extra credit: design a case around your design

Useful links

• KiCad homepage
• XTool homepage
• Xtronic homepage

Group Assignment

I didn´t know exactly what I should do for this assignment so I decided to hook up a power supply, oscilloscope and a AVO meter and take a look at the signal.

Here I am looking at 5V from the power supply. The signal is a little fussy but all the equipment agreed on the voltage.

Then I hooked the Seeed up to the USB port of my computer and hooked the 5V pin up to the scope.

The signal was a little fuzzy like from the power suply and the peak to peak was 600mV.

Individual Assignment

I decided to desigh a extension board for my Seeed Studio. I do not like breadboards ond pins for prototyping so I am going to desing a aboard with screw connection. Maybe I will add some push buttons and slide buttons to be used for testing.

Here the design is being made in KiCad Schematic.

Here I am designing the board it self. Where the componets will be located.

Here is the 3D view but with some 3D models missing, have to look into that.

I did not do anything for extra credit. I did not try another workflow, I only used KiCad, I did not simulate my design and I did not design a case around my design.