Week 08: Electronics Design¶
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
KiCAD¶
To create a design, I use the program KiCAD, which is available online for free
Downloading Fablab Library¶
The Fablab library is an amazing resource that has pre-made models for the most common microcontroller/development boards. It will be very useful for designing so I do not have to manually measure and make each development board.
Click on plugin and content manager to get the Fab Academy plugins.
When trying to download the Fab Academy KiCAD library, I got an error. Normally it is supposed to open another window where I can search for the Fab Library and install it.
First fix: I try is switching the network to private. The error still shows up.
Second fix: KiCAD recently updated. I uninstall and reinstall KiCAD, paying extra attention to all of the setup questions, which were minimal.
Third fix: My true goal is to download the Fab Library, not debug the PCM. I will download and upload the files directly.
Click libraries and search “fablab”. The purple dinosaur icon and the file titles “KiCad FabLib” is the file I am looking for. Download it.
In KiCAD, click PCM again. When the SSL fails it will open this screen. Click “install from file”.
Navigate to the zipped file. DO NOT UNZIP THE FILE. Unzipped files don’t work. The .zip in the search bar shows that it WANTS the zipped file
The file load loaded and then showed me this. lets see if the files are in here anyway
go to files click new project, click Default Kicad and click “ok”
choose the folder it goes to and name it
go into schematic editor
click place symbol
We are looking for a library called PCM_fab. it is not here.
try 5. close and reopen kicad. sometimes programs need to be restarted when you add a new library
the library is here! Hooray!