Electronics design + EDA

In one sentence: I'd like to make PCBs a focal point of my final project, but I have to learn more about the components to make it work.

Reflection: Spending more time on this earlier in the week gave me more time to think creatively about how I could use EDA.

Attended a training session on Thursday and Friday, which helped solidify two distinct things that I learned:

1. The uses of a multimeter and the mechanics of how to use one
2. The value of an oscilloscope in identifying potential voltage drops in a circuit

If I could go back to to Friday night, I would have spent more time on KiCad and SVG PCB and tried to cross the threshold of "making" something. I did at least (finally) make a template for my weekly update pages.

Additional things "made:" a page on my website, two PCBs, and new CSS file for the website.

Group assignment

Meeting the multimeter

Quentin and Diana were patient teachers. Quentin assured us that it would be very difficult to electrocute ourselves, and was quick to turn to alternative means of instruction (pen and paper) when he could tell we needed more basic instruction on the components of a PCB. Diana gave us a demo on the arch shop multimeter and a Cold War era oscilloscope, and her project of the drone made out of a PCB helped inspire my idea of a geodesic globe made out of PCBs.

"Below 20V, very chill." - Quentin

Topics discussed

  1. PCB's have different voltage preferences
  2. Uses of the multimeter

Multimeters can be used to:

Individual assignment

SVG PCB and KiCad

I gravitated towards SVG PCB based on what I wanted to make for my final project. Some reflection on this helped me think about how PCBs could be integrated. I want to put a globe at the center of my project, and help from Leo re: 3D PCBs got me thinking: what if I used a bunch of PCBs to make a 3D object? So I looked up the geometry for geodesic globes, and it doesn't seem impossible: I could make a globe out of 80 facets, which would be some proportion of equilateral and isosceles triangles. This may be a lot of triangles, but as a wise woman once told me:

"When eating an elephant, you go one bite at a time" - Erica Brown, Barnstable High School Chemistry teacher

SVC PCB was perfect for this task:

  1. I can easily make irregular contours using the editor for the map I'd like to make out of the copper wiring
  2. I can make PCBs in the shape of triangles, and be fairly rigorous in how I set the dimensions
  3. I can even make copper art for the parts of the globe where I can't trace country outlines perfectly, although the goal is to make every country out of a circuit to show we are all ~connected~

Next steps:

  • Spend more time on KiCad to understand how to test constraints of a board
  • Add Grasshopper plug-in to Rhino for geodesic globe
  • Look for ways to translate country maps to a globe