Kenny Friedman, Week 05

Electronic Design

Learning Eagle

Even though I've used microcontrollers before, and took the 6.115 microcontroller class, I've never made a PCB from start to finish before.

I learned how to use Eagle and create schematics to generate boards. From an HCI/UI perspective, I consider Eagle to be a total crime. It is clear that it was built with a heavy engineering focus, and not from a user perspective. Everything from the way libraries are imported (which should just work with a drag-and-drop interface), to having a low barrier to entry to start, I think could use some major improvement. I figured out most things after reading a few tutorials, but I have many ideas for an improved interface. I might just try and prototype one...

I created a board based on the hello world board, and added an LED and resistor combo to the board. Because I was short on time this weekend, I went with the bare minimum. I hope to return soon and improve it further.

Unfortunately, I didn't have a chance to mill and solder my board together this week, but if you skip down to week 7, you'll see that I do have the whole process working now.