Geometric puzzles

Preamble

Having come across a brain teaser (see at the bottom of the page), and thinking that it could be solved using geometry, I needed a geometric drawing package for OSX, but one that would run on Mountain Lion…

Getting a .epw into EagleCAD

Preamble

Following on from ArduinoBoys and others and Making your own ArduinoBoy, I was looking to get the footprint and/or EagleCAD (or KiCAD) file from Mouser’s DIN 61NC5F in order to compare it to the footprint of the 57PC5F:

57PC5F footprint

There is a link to a .epw file, 502-61NC5F-pcb-part-librarie​s.epw.

.epw files are ECAD Part Wizard files, available from RS: ECAD Part Wizard, which unfortunately requires M$ Excel. An alternative is DesignSpark’s PCB Part Library, which requires Windows (but maybe able to run in a Wineskin on OSX).

See Import-PCB-Part-Library-parts-to-EAGLE video, which shows how to automatically import into EagleCAD. However, as the video demonstrates, a login is required, meaning that you have to sign up for a service.

The Mouser product page links to FREE HIGH QUALITY PCB LIBRARIES FOR ECAD TOOLS, and the video there shows the SamacSys LibraryLoader (which is the same as the tool on the DesignSpark page).

So how can you do it manually?

Scaling PDF for PCB

Preamble

Following on from ArduinoBoys and others, I was having a bit of a job getting the PNG of the ArduinoBoy PCB by Trash80 (with Gameboy Genius’s fix Fixing Gameboy-powered Arduinoboy MIDI glitches) to convert to PDF with the correct scaling, in order to send to Layer Circuit, as mentioned in PCBs in BKK.

Make two PDFs from Eagle two sided PCB

Preamble

Following on from Making your own PCBs

Something from nothing

Preamble

This blog, on 3D printers made from e-waste, started life as part of 3D Printing, but became an article in itself…

NOR symbols in Eagle

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The NOR/OR logic gate symbols in Eagle look weird…

ADSR waveform generator

Preamble

Too rushed for an amusing title…

Here are a number of ADSR circuits, taken from the fantastic Yusynth website (which I came across after reading StackExchange – Building a synthesizer with no prior experience) – in particular the Archives page.

The circuits are described within PDFs, and I drew up the corresponding schematic and board files in EagleCAD.

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The EagleCAD files available on github, although seeing as Micro$oft have just acquired Github, they may not be there for very long… Five minutes later – #movingtogitlab!

The EagleCAD files available on Gitlab: Testkins/ADSR-Waveform-generator

Using EagleCAD – board layout

Preamble

I have been rather successfully using EagleCAD, for designing schematics, and then Veroboard/Stripboard layouts (instead of PCB layouts).

Here are a few of the gotchas that I have found.

Note that this article covers boards only. For schematic layout issues, see EagleCAD nuances – schematics

Using KiCad

Preamble

Using KiCad…. for the first time. Here we are using it to create Veroboard/Stripboard layouts – without first laying out the schematic. My reason for this is that I had already used EagleCAD to draw up the schematic, and then, like most people, realised that the board size was too limited, in the freeware version (100 x 80 mm (4″ x 3.2″)), to allow all of the components to be placed.

Note that this article applies to version 4.0.7. Version 5 should be released soon, see When will Kicad 5 be available? – Software – KiCad.info Forums, and should have a much better user experience, as well as being able to import EagleCAD files.

Building Circuits for Stripboard using EAGLE – Mike Perks

Preamble

This is a great webpage, written by Mike Perks in 2005, which I came across whilst reading Stripboard. Unfortunately, the link therein was dead and it took me a while to locate it. I have taken the liberty to reproduce it here, as it may get lost again, in the sands of time, that is the web. The zip file is here: http://archive.is/download/Pz2iz.zip