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Aijia Yao

MIT EECS • HTMAA 2025

Week 5 – Electronics Design

September 2025

This week was mainly about PCB design and simulation.

What I Did

PCB Design

Fusion PCB

  • Make sure to import the library to have access to all components.
  • Zero ohm resistance can be used to jump through wires.
  • Make sure the edge of the board is here to leave enough space for connections.
    • vinyl
    A screen shot here with XIAO-RP2040 example

What I want to design

In the final project, I want to put the hourglass with different speed control for the flow of sand.
  • The hourglass will be placed in a box with a touch pad on the side to control the speed.
  • The PCB will be placed at the bottom of the box to connect with the touch pad and control the motor that controls the speed of the hourglass.
  • Ultimately, I want to automate the process to get rid of the manual control, and the flow will be controlled by "conversation quality" with audio sensing/processing.
    • vinyl
    A screen shot here with XIAO-RP2040 example
    Above is the schematic design of the PCB with XIAO-RP2040 microcontroller, LED and series resistor as one of the simplest examples.

    Other Notes

    • It's utterly weird that I was introduced to use Cadence Virtuoso for IC design first before the PCB design. The schematics of PCB automatically go to a layout so smoothly really amazed me.