Week 11: Networking and communications

This week was all about making multiple boards and connecting them together. Most of the material covered in lecture was over my head, but we were given the option of making a really cool radio circuit board, so I did built it as an example of wireless networking! Thank you to Rehmi Post for designing it, you can find his page with instructions here.

Making the Hello_Radio

Below are some photographs of the board after stuffing. Some things I discovered while making these boards:

On the Modela, set the speed to 3mm/s, it will make the traces come out a lot cleaner, and it will still take under 30 minutes to mill one board (keep in mind you need two to communicate with each other).
When soldering on the radio chip and microprocessor, lay solder down everywhere and then use copper braid to pull it back up. But be careful: if you get solder too high up on the pins, it can be really difficult to get it out with copper braid!
The Modela didn't cut my vias out, so I used some copper vinyl to connect the top side of the board to the bottom.

The two radios side by side.

A close up of one radio, although it should be noted that the silver 10MHz crystal is the wrong one, and needs to be replaced with a black-packaged 10MHz one.

	The two radios side by side.
	A close up of one radio, although it should be noted that the silver 10MHz crystal is the wrong one, and needs to be replaced with a black-packaged 10MHz one.