Project 05 -- Electronics Design + Fabrication
For this week's assignment we started with the hello44-FTDI board pictured here, and were tasked with integrating a switch and an LED. This scheme features an ATTINY44, FTDI, ISP, and a Resonator for timing.
I started by recreating the circuit diagram in EagleCAD and used heavy tagging to make sense of it all. Drawing the actual lines to connect everything ended up making really confusing spaghetti, and I had to redo it a bunch of times to make sure everything was connected properly, and actually made sense. Thinking about it less of a board and more of a diagram helped me rethink how EagleCAD works.
Here was the first pass at routing. I cemented a bunch of components, and then realized nothing would work unless I made a ton of new lines. Here was the first falure, and I rejected this first pass.
This pass was another failure. I kept getting almost done and realizing I was totally locked in. This process reminded me a lot of the game "Snake" because I kept running into my own tail.
Here was the second to last pass on the board. I was happy with it and it passed the check. The only thing I changed after this was I added a resistor and a green LED to indicate operation.
Traces! This was the first pass at the traces. I added my logo to this.
Milling Time! I started cutting the board, but ran into a snag trying to readjust the Z-height to cut deeper and it dragged across the board. Had to slide the operation over and recut it.
Final Pass to cut it out.
Here is the completed Mill operation with my mistake to the left of it.
Almost done stuffing the board. Last thing to do is place the Resonator and a few more little details.
Glamour Shot. Completed board. Although I'm still not sure if the LED's are placed backwards or not. They're super tiny and it's hard to tell which side is which. This is something I'll probably have to re-solder.
Under the microscope. Connections look pretty good. Onto testing and programming. More to come....
