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week four

wiring (almost) anything

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Learning kiCAD

This week there was a focus on designing PCBs, which was a very opaque topic to me before. At first I was having a lot of trouble figuring out how to most eaisly approach the design of my PCB, however with the help of Mateo, I came accross this recitation by the TA Zach from two years ago about using KiCAD - which proved to be invaluable.

I began by following the tutorial to generate a 'hello world' board identical to the one that Zach made in the tutorial. I ran into some issues when trying to export the board's nets - as the tutorial was done on an earlier version of kiCAD which required the user to export the nets from the schematic in order to open them in the board editor. However, in the new version of the software allows you to update the PCB from the schematic directly, which makes the process much easier!

Grasshopper file


Grasshopper file
Grasshopper file


After having completed the modeling for this object, I needed to decide which of the three printers to use. When making this decision I made a brief comparision of the three printer types below.

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Designing my own PCB

After having followed the tutorial, I tried to do an experiment for my final project and create a board with many buttons (which could potentially serve as keys for a phone). I had no idea which of the microprocessors to use, but I used this to attach a XIAO processor, which I ended up following.

Grasshopper file


At first I wanted to add twelve buttons to the board, however as the XIAO only had 10 pins, I decided to only have the 9 buttons. I remain unclear about why the link above used the four pin button rather than the two pin - when two of the pins are realistically connected to the other two. At first I started off with an ambitious idea for a form of the PCB, however I quickly realized that the 9 buttons, resistors and the processor proved to be a challange to wire without additional resistors Due to so many interconnections. I resorted to a significantly more boring structure with two twos of buttons on either side of the processor and the resistors on the exteriors.


Grasshopper file


Grasshopper file


Grasshopper file


The board kind of ended up looking like nothing, but perhaps more passes would allow it to become more characteristic of something graphical. I did a custumization pass on it, trying to vibe off of the all over the place asthetic of a paint pallatte.


Grasshopper file


Grasshopper file


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