6. Electronics Design

Goals

Group assignment:

• [x] use the test equipment in your lab to observe the operation of a microcontroller circuit board

Individual assignment:

• [x] 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
• [x] extra credit: design a case for it

Tools Used

• Concepts - My go-to sketching app on the ipad
• Fusion 360 - 3D CAD/CAM software from autodesk
• Fusion 360 Electronics/Eagle - EDA Software build right into Fusion
• Blender - Free and opensource 3D software that can be used for anything from sculpting to animation and much more.
• Zed - My new text editor, I Decided to switch from Sublime as I wanted to add more open source to my workflow.
• Multimeter

TLDR; Nice images

Group Project

For the group assignment I will be describing the multimeter. The report can be found on our node site

Summary

My summary of using the multimeter is probably rather boring as I’m still not really sure what I am doing. But I can see how this will be an invaluable tool going forward. For example the way the voltage can vary widely across the different pins in a way that was not at all obvious to me reading the docs.

Individual Project

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1. Starting from scratch

As a total beginner I wanted to run through some tutorials before jumping fully into this weeks assignment. I walked through an official tutorial on Autodesks youtube page, Part 1 and Part 2

1.0 Schematic Design

Splash screen for Fusion 360’s electronic design workspace. For this tutorial I was using Fusion’s Tutorial library of components. My first component was a 555 timer. I then brought in my resistors. Then my LED’s and capacitors. I then started to connect things, in Fusion this is called Net. I finished connecting my components. And I then brought in my power supply, note that the Nets do not need to be physically connected if they have the same name. Completed schematic.

1.1 Board Design

When shifting into the board design work space all your parts need to be arranged once again. So with a bit of moving around and rotating parts I got to this stage. For this tutorial the auto route tool was used to connect all the traces.

1.2 Board 3D Model

I then pushed the design file to a 3D model. And because I didn’t really know what to do with it I decided to experiment with a tool that was brought up at last weeks recitation. LumaLabs Genie. So I made a pensive looking bear. And perched him on top of my timer to have a think on my behalf about what we have done here today.

2. Copying Adrián

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After the above I still was not confident in using the tool as I had just verbatim followed someones instructions. So I thought the next step might be to try and recreate an existing board myself.

I decided to try and replicate the Quentorres board by Adrián Torres using Fusion 360 and the FabLab Library.

2.0 libraries and setup

To begin with I downloaded the fab library from Gitlab, both the set of components and the design rules. I checked the BOM on Adrian’s Github. And found the layout of the board. Along with a schematic.

2.1 Schematic Design

I first brought all my components into the Fusion workspace. And started to connect them in sections, in this case beginning with the LEDs. I worked my way around the schematic until I had replicated Adrian’s design as best I could.

2.1 Board Design

The parts were then pushed to the board design. And roughly arranged in place. When running the traces manually there was lots of jumping back and forth between the schematic and the board. It was nice that Fusion wouldn’t let me make critical errors, such as create a trace between two components that were not connected in the schematic. I then trimmed the board down to size by dragging in the yellow edges. And used the manufacturing checks to find any errors. Mostly these were traces that were not properly going back to their pads.

2.2 3D Board Design

I then pushed out a 3D model of the board, though it was missing most of the 3D models for the components.

2.3 Housing

For extra cred I drew up a quick housing for the board. As I don’t really know what to do with the board yet the housing is mostly just a joke. I incorporated some 3D printing design for manufacture, using large chamfers on the standoffs for the board. And rendered out the board in Blender with some helpful text.

In Summary

Definitely out of my comfort zone this week. Although I have went through the process of making a few boards in Fusion I feel like this section is going to take a lot of practice.

Things I would do differently next time

Keen to try KiCad as I didn’t see any super strong linkages for the level of work I am doing in Fusion.

See below link to files created this week:

Week 6 Files

End

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