Week 5. Designing Electronics

Seems like we are getting deeper again in the electronics world! I was looking forward to it. The assignment for this week has been to replicate the design of the echo board designed by Neil. But the challenge also was to add in one of the free pins of the ATtiny44 an led with its corresponding resistor.

We are asked to go all the way through. Designing from (not really) scratch in a PCB design software, manufacture the PCB milling the traces and cutting edges, soldering all necessary components and programming it. Hopefully, by next wednesday I will have my tiny board able to echo my words through the serial. Toco madera.

One of the thing I am learning here at MIT is that learning is a process in which you discover much more topics you unknown. Lol. So that exactly happens with Eagle or, in my case, KiCad.(Thanks Patricia for guide me and also as allways, thanks Zach for all my questions answered.)

KiCad or Eagle? Designing (at least trying) my board

Since I have arrived, I: am using AutoDesk sw Fusion 360 so much. But not this time. I have decided to give a try to KiCad, an opensource tool option. Zach is really good at it and if he is using this tool, should be great isn't it?

I started by watching and understanding from other years HTMAA classes all the components that were needed to complete my board. Once I had a list of them, Patricia helped me on installing the needed libraries and Zach helped me with the design rules needed for traces constrains.

Jake class also helped me so much yo undertand all different parts that comprises a cad design for designing electronics

Inside the Schematics modulus of KiCad, I finished all necessary connections

Once you made all your connections, you have to link them to have a desired footprint and to select an specigic item in your fab inventory.

Once you have completed this and generated a net list, you are ready to change from schematics to a real PCB Design!

Even though I did not have done a great job (I kew it when I saw Camron pcb. Mine is like x2 bigger) I founded really nice to draw paths. Halph a logic game, halph OCT, my cup of tea.

One time it was finished, Zach recommended me to work with SVG files inside Inkscape. I checked that my design fit in a 50mm x 75mm boards and I generated my black and white SVG files to be exported to Mods.

The milling and the soldering was pretty straight forward. Ready to program it!!

Hopefully I did have not made any mistake in the schematics, or in the routing, or in the component selection, or in the polarities when soldering. Omg so many problem sources when written down. Cruzo los dedos.

back to menu>