Week 4

1. PCB Design with KiCAD

I designed the PCB with KiCAD and imported the FAB inventory library for footprints. The design is based on previous simulation with WokWi on week 2, which uses a Xiao RP2040 to control a 16x2 LCD, displaying spikes that are randomly generated. It is also connected to a Pololu VL53L1X distance sensor. I plan to program it that when your hands move closer to the board, the spike firing probability will increase, making it like a real mice that got scared and show more neural activity when you get close.

2. Group Assignment

Quentin showed us how we can look at the voltage across components and check whether the components are connected properly with a multimeter. We can also get more details of the signals with an oscilloscope, which we used the trigger mode to detect signal onset to specifically look at the waveform of the blinking signal. It’s interesting to observe an overshoot when the signal rises. Finally, we got to see the Saleae Logic Analyzer, which is tiny but super powerful, showing even clearer result of the signal. It can even read the TX signal from the board once we tell it the baud rate of the signal, and it’s very cool to see “Hello, world” getting intepreted and showing on top of the waveform.