Intro

With the use of PCB design, complex circuits can be easier to construct and produce. PCBs make cable management easier and prevent short circuits/broken connections.

Through your ECE classes and SCR, you will become familiar with three different PCB design software suites: Eagle (used in circuits lab), KiCAD (free open-source software), and Altium Designer. SCR recently acquired a sponsorship from Altium to use this software!

By completing the following challenges you can increase your PCB layout knowledge and boost your resume. These challenges focus on elements that could be incorporated into future robotic designs. By completing them in order, each challenge should prepare you to complete the next one.

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Basic: 555 Timer Circuit

Pick a schematic from the 555 timer website and recreate it in Altium. After creating the schematic, complete the PCB layout. This challenge focuses on becoming familiar with Altium designer and developing basic PCB skills.

From the website there are a couple of schematics that could be used for future SCR projects. These are the servo tester, stepper motor controller, and servo controller. However, feel free to pick whichever schematic looks the most interesting. Try to make your finished product as small as possible!

Basic 2: Buck Convertor

Buck convertors are widely used in SCR to provide the correct amount of voltage for different components. Knowing how they work is very useful and can be helpful to your career (might show up in interview questions). Research, create a schematic, and design a PCB for a buck convertor. Provide documentation of your research.

Immediate: Voltage/Current monitoring

In robotics it is often important to know what the different voltages/currents are in different electronic areas on a robot. This could be used to measure battery level or guarantee safe levels to not fry electronic components. Research, create a schematic, and design a PCB for either voltage or current monitoring for a robot. Provide documentation of your research.

Expert: Microcontroller

Welcome to the SCR Microcontroller Challenge! Over the next three weeks we will be developing our own microcontroller boards from scratch. The microcontroller PCB you develop can be general purpose (think like an Arduino) or it can be application specific (can help with a certain part of the robot like motor control, sensing, etc.) Be creative! The goal here is to learn about advanced PCB design while passing the time over the break / isolation period.

In general, there are a few requirements for the microcontroller:

• The unit cost of each board must be under 5. Unit cost is the cost of producing a single one of your microcontroller boards. So if you order 5 PCBs and 5x the amount of parts you need, you would add up all your costs and divide by 5 to get the unit cost. Note: you should make a bill of materials
• Shipping costs do not count in the cost requirement, but shipping takes time
• Assembly services count in the cost requirement, and should be divided evenly between all boards that are assembled (if you use an assembly service).
• The microcontroller must be programmable. Just having it on the board doesn't really do much In addition to making a sick PCB, please document your design process. If your board works great, we would love to replicate it in SCR. If it doesn't work out, it would be good to learn from the mistakes. Also, consider doing your work on your personal github so you have an additional personal project you can talk about in an interview

(taken from the hardware-challenge slack channel, written by jkleiber)