Programs Used
- KiCad
- Fusion 360
Week 5: Electronics Design
Individual Assignment
- Use an EDA tool to design a development board with parts from the inventory to interact and communicate with an embedded microcontroller.
- Extra Credit: Try an alternative design workflow.
- Extra Credit: Design a case for the board.
Until now, my experience with electronics has been fairly limited. After attending this week’s recitation, I considered starting my PCB design in either KiCad or Fusion 360 and ultimately decided on KiCad. Using Wokwi, I programmed an ESP32 S3 microcontroller to blink three LEDs consecutively.
void setup() {
Serial.begin(115200);
pinMode(D2, OUTPUT);
pinMode(D3, OUTPUT);
pinMode(D4, OUTPUT);
Serial.println("");
Serial.println("Hello, XIAO ESP32-S3!");
Serial.println("Welcome to Wokwi :-)");
}
void loop() {
Serial.println("Red");
digitalWrite(D2, HIGH);
delay(500);
digitalWrite(D2, LOW);
Serial.println("Green");
digitalWrite(D3, HIGH);
delay(500);
digitalWrite(D3, LOW);
Serial.println("Blue");
digitalWrite(D4, HIGH);
delay(500);
digitalWrite(D4, LOW);
}
Once I finalized the design, I exported the Gerber file and converted it to PNG format using Quentin's Gerber2img program. The completed board is shown below and is ready for milling!
Group Assignment
- Use lab test equipment to observe the operation of a microcontroller circuit board.
During the group assignment, We met with Quentin at MARS lab and explored various methods for observing and debugging microcontrollers, using a multimeter and two types of oscilloscopes to analyze electrical signals. I plan to experiment further with KiCad to create a schematic for this project!