Week06
Electronics Design¶
Assignment¶
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 logic analyzer)
- Document your work on the group work page and reflect what you learned on your individual page
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
Group assignment¶
Our group assignment is on lab’s page. Since I lead group assignment, there are nothing special learned. If I had to say it, I found price of Saleae logic got so higher than when I purchased.
Use an EDA tool¶
I’m EAGLE user for long time, but Autodesk announced their support will be end at 7 June 2026. So I need to choose where I go. One option is Fusion, the other is KiCad. I tried KiCad about 10 years ago and had bad feeling about that. But I’ve never tried Fusion EDA, so I will try Fusion this time.
Through this trial, I found these things.
- We can use EAGLE libraries directly.
- Positions of buttons are different from EAGLE, but operations are very common.
I could finish schematics drawing very quickly.
I found I’d better to have more than 20 mil trace width and clearance, so I setup design rule at first.
And I finished drawing PCB layout and then ran design rule check. There are no error for fabricate.
Files I designed are: W6_Dev_Board.sch, W6_Dev_Board.brd
When I try to save those files to local, I need to do “export”. 
But we have “EAGLE 9.X compatible” option. 
Problem¶
I didn’t have any problem on this week, but I had problem to install FlatCAM on my Mac. There are unofficial brew FlatCAM formula but it looks outdated.
The solution I choose are using MODS and/or other alternative solution.
What I learned¶
It’s super easy changing over to Fusion from Eagle. 
Checklist¶
- Linked to the group assignment page
- Documented what you have learned in electronics design
- Checked your board can be fabricated
- Explained problems and how you fixed them.
- Included original design files (Eagle, KiCad, etc.)
- Included a ‘hero shot’