9. Electronics Production¶
Breadboard Prototype¶
I used this bread board prototype I made during my Inputs week to use as a model for how I would design my PCB board. The breadboard worked great but in hindsight it was a little more complex than it needed to be, this caused my PCB to be pretty hard to route later on in the process, though, I don’t know how I could’ve solved that.
Designing the PCB¶
Since this week was shortened due to spring break—and the lab would be closed—I had to design my PCB within just a few hours. This time constraint led to a few issues, which I’ll discuss later.
The PCB design itself was straightforward. I chose 1206-sized SMD components since I was already familiar with them from Electronics Design Week. The schematic was relatively simple, but transferring it to the PCB layout proved more challenging. Fitting all the traces onto a single layer required some careful routing, but I eventually got everything to work. Once finalized, I sent the design for milling.
Milling the PCB¶
Milling the PCB went smoothly. Since the lab was closing in 15 minutes, I had to work quickly and didn’t have time to document the process in detail. However, it was very similar to what I had done during Electronics Design Week—straightforward and without issues.
Soldering¶
For soldering, I didn’t have access to the lab, so I relied on the SMD book provided for Fab. I used five 10K resistors, five LEDs, my soldering iron, a solder fan, and a modeling mat to protect my wooden desk. The soldering process took about 45 minutes, but it was relatively simple.
The biggest challenge was the lack of a multimeter—we lost the one we usually have at home. To solve this, I came up with a clever workaround. I took a spare chip, placed it on a breadboard, and connected the 3.3V pin through a 220Ω resistor to a jumper cable, which I left hanging. Then, I connected another jumper cable to ground. Using this setup, I was able to test the polarity of the LEDs and ensure they were oriented correctly. This method worked even better than I expected, and I felt pretty proud of my improvisation.
I also soldered female jumper wires to my board so I could connect the rotary key switch to the board.
Coding¶
To find out how I coded my board, check out my Inputs week.