Learning to make electronic boards with EagleCAD

Overview

Familiarize myself with Eagle.
You can download Eagle at: CadSoft Eagle

Eagle has two parts we will work with.

Todo: Familiarize yourself with circuit symbols.

Learning EagleCad

EagleCad is both intuitive but also takes time to learn. The parts library speeds things up. It will take practice to visualize the setups so that you can have cleaner wiring of boards.
The first thing I did was try to reproduce the tinyISP boards from Week 4. The large number of routes made this a difficult first learning experience. See the slideshow. Click for closeups.



Making the Echo Hello World Board

I am glad I have already gotten some experience with Eagle before doing my homework. The assignment is to make the Echo Hello World Board.
  • Looked in the fab library for the ATTNY44 chip. Inserted into circuit schematic.
  • Add the header pins for FTDI(right) and ISP, in system programmer(bottom).
  • Add 10K resistor. It is the pull up resistor. This stablizes the potential on the RST to be high. The pin is active when at a low potential.
  • Add capacitor(1 microFarad).This acts as a filter.
  • Wire in the headers.
  • Wire in all the other elements.
  • Add an led and limiting resistor.
  • Add a switch.
  • Route the traces.
  • Fix problems. Retry. Fix Problems.....
  • Make the board.


  • Recap

    The goal behind this should be to design and make the board. An elegant board should be possible. I am not sure if my board meets that standard. It takes some experience to layout the board to avoid crossing routes. I have many vias as a result. Eagle took time to work. With the biggest time taken to find where everything is and then to see the patterns.