Pcb

Today two sets of PCBs arrived from OSH Park. Firstly a breakout board for Kingbright 14 segment LEDs. These are great for very high brightness text display. Secondly a small breakout board for the Maestro A2035-H GPS receiver.

People often ask how I assemble SMD boards, the video below is sped up to 20x and demonstrates the process. It takes a few minutes to dab some solder paste on each pad, then parts are placed using anti-magnetic tweezers.

I am currently trying to document the various electronics I have done previously. A brief page about my breadboard power supply is now available.

There is a lot of myth and misconception about whether right angle (90°), chamfered (45°) or curved PCB traces are “better”. One of the often quoted “facts” is that right angles are bad for signal propagation or radiated RF emissions.

I have previously raved about BatchPCB, a low cost prototyping service run by SparkFun out of the USA. However, it seems that you now can’t select shipping to the UK (and perhaps other parts of Europe) and they don’t seem to be doing too much about it.

I have just uploaded the latest version of my Eagle library, containing a bunch of new parts. These include: Maxim DS1337 RTC RFM12 radio module (with pins) Keystone CR123A battery holder Memsic MXC6202 I2C accelerometer ON Semi CAT6219 500mA LDO regulator Texas Instruments TSL2560 / TSL2561 light-to-digital converter Maxim DS620 Low-Voltage, ±0.

One of the circuit boards I’m developing would benefit from an onboard antenna, so I started hunting for design tips. The following three PDF documents do a great job of explaining the basics:

It has been ages since I have updated this site. I have started to document some of the PCBs I have created The first is an 8x8 LED matrix, with code for some whizzy effects.

My first bunch of boards arrived back from BatchPCB and I’m really impressed.  Great printing for the silkscreen and a really professional looking product.  One of the boards I ordered was a breakout board for the SMD PIC 18F2321, the first surface mount board I have tried.