Kicad: Making Your Own Circuit Boards

Last weekend, I took a class on using KiCad, the free, open source circuit board design program.  I hadn't made a board since high school using a Radio Shack etch-it-yourself kit.  To be honest, college was mostly wire wrap in those times.

The class was sponsored by WyoLum, held at the Nova Labs makerspace, and taught by Anool Mahidharia who had flown over from Mumbai with his bride to attend the Open Hardware Summit.

In the course of the weekend, we learned how to use KiCad, building a power supply, then building our own creation.

My design is at OSH Park now and should be delivered this week.  I will not spoil the surprise as there is a healthy chance there will need to be another set of revisions to get it where it should be.

I would guess I qualify now for the KiCad Skills Badge :)

ABC Arduino Basic Connections the Book!

I have gushed over the circuit diagrams published by Alberto "Pighixxx" Piganti over the past few months.  He decided to collect them into a laminated bound book!

The campaign is on Indiegogo here.

Beautiful diagrams on every page

The campaign has already met it's goal and will make the book larger if they meet higher targets.  If you like building circuits but Making Things, this will help immensely.

Summer Lull and Where New Projects Are Being Posted

Summer has been rather busy around here.  With warm weather comes home improvement and three fair sized projects (deck, plumbing, foundation leak).

But I've still had time for electronic projects.  I received my Adafruit Trinket ATTiny85 based board and I was off connecting circuits.  This was a challenge, as many Arduino libraries do not work out of the box as the Tiny has fewer onboard hardware resources and limited memory.   So I started some posts on my progress, not here on the blog but on Google+.   It was faster.

Then I got "the e-mail".  Adafruit sent me a message stating they liked the work I had done on Trinket and asked if I wanted to write some tutorials.  Of course!  After formally asking work to ensure I had the ethics issues taken care of, I've started some articles, two of which have been posted.  My articles will appear in a group on this page.

Exciting, definitely.  So for fans of my open source posts, for now I suggest looking on the Adafruit Learning System for guides, mine will be there.