6. Electronics Design¶
Downloads¶
Students Who Helped Me¶
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)
- Document your work on the group work page and reflect what you learned on your individual page
This is the link to the group website.
Logic Analyzer¶
What is it?¶
An analog analyzer is a device that measures and analyzes continuous (analog) signals, such as sound, voltage, or radio waves, to assess their properties like frequency, amplitude, and distortion.
How to set up¶
To set up the analog analizer, we used a siple circuit would use PWM (Pulse Width Modulation) pins in order to pulse an LED. Once that was creted we down loaded the WaveForms.Once this was downloaded we orked with Andrew Puky to figure it out. While trying to figure it out we need to try many different things.
Our first problem was for some reason some softwares don’t work on Noah’s computer, therefore we had to switch to mine. We noticed it wasn’t working with Noah’s when we tried to plug in the analog discovery it said there was no board found and only and demo one came up. After we switched over to my computer that worked perfectly.
Once the board was connected, we used “Scope”. Scope is a way to get what the oscilloscope looked like but online through the discovery2 (that is the device we were using name).
After that it took me to a page that looked like the imgae below. This is where you can control the display. The first part was understanding the side panel. When wiring the Discovery2, we used +1 and -1 wires which were the very first ones. As you can see the first channel is already set to +-1 which means that it would be reading through the wores we chose. If we had a 2nd circuit we would used a second channel but for us we didn’t need that so we just unselected that. Then the next step was the time (the box above channel one). This controlled the speed of the scope. The less time the closer to hours, the closer together the sections are. You want to set the time to a good number where you can tel and read what is happening. THen after that, the next step was to click start and watch it.
Image of set up
video of it working
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
Downloading KiCad¶
To download KiCad, I went to the dowload it through the website. Then I waited a very long time because it was a long dowload. It look about 10 minutes to finish. Then it took me to the following pages.
This is the welcome screen to the download. From here I just followed the steps it promted me todo.
If you have a computer with multiple users, its important to make sure its on your user.
Then I went aheard and made sure I downloaded everything and I just hit next for everything else because there was nothing else I needed to change.
Designing the Schematic¶
To design the schematic I first opened up KiCad. The first step of the designing process was to make a new project. To do this, in the upper left hand corner I went to file then to new project. This then takes you to a place to name the project and to choose the folder that you would like to have the schematic in.
After making the new project, the next step was to got to the schematic. The following button take you there.
When you open that up, it takes you to a blank page looking like this.
The next step is to add the symobols to make the PCB. To add the symbols, first you you go to the symbol library browser. It is the highlighted symbol.
Once you are in the symbol library browswer, it looks like this screen. We used the fab library that was given to us by our teachers.
Once you have selected the symbol you would like to use, you click the following button to add it to the schematic.
This is the what my finished schematic looks likes. When making schematics its important to make sure the positive and negative are all correct because if they aren’t then it will be harder for later. Schematics provide a clear, easy to read overview of a system’s components and their connections, and are then used to inform the creation of layout drawings.
Once the schematic is done being made, before you can move on to the PCB editor, it is important to make sure you items have footprints. Footprints are what tell the PCB editor what type of symbol it is, which them tells the machine what to mill out and what not to mill out.
To get to the footprints, first you go to properties. You can eater click on the symbol then click the letter “E” on your keyboard. Or another way is to right click on the symbol once you select it and it brings up the following drop down. Then go down to “Properties”.
Once you are in properties, it should look like the following image.
Once you are in there look for the following section labeled “Footprint”. It may have something already in that section, byt that does not mean a footprint is selected. if you don’t do anything to it, it will not show up later. So add a footprint even if you think its already there. Once you find the footprint section, click on the middle box under “Value”. It will look like the image below once you do. Then click on the thing that looks like books.
Once you click on the books, it should look like this. This is inside the foorprints called the “Footprint Chooser”. It is important to find the exact symbol that you are using in the footprint chooser.
As you can see, I used the Seeed RP2040 in my example. And when I found it under our fab folder, and clicked on it, this is what it looked like. On the side is a preview of what it will look like. Once you are satisfied, click “OK”.
After you have done one, then you need todo it for the rest of the symbols. The more times you do it, the easier it gets. After the footprints are all finished and selected, then the next step it the PBC editor.