Golborne Vintage Radio

Had a request from a chum to make him a PCB, the purpose of which went whoosh over my head, but he tells me thus: "The shield is basically for plugging into the Arduino, plug in the ATtiny85, upload a boot-loader then upload the program.  All this can be done on a breadboard but it's a lot simpler and less errors occurring when using jumper leads".

There are only 2 electronic components involved. 1 is the Atmel AT Tiny 85 and the other is a 10uF electrolytic cap.

Oh well...

He sent me some artwork prepared using a 'free' PCB CAD package called 'Fritzing' which I hadn't heard of before.

I tidied it up a bit, though it still seems to have some redundant pads for headers on it, but never mind - he's happy with the PCB and tells me it works fine, whatever it's supposed to do!

A few pics:

First is his layout produced using Fritzing. (Not sure why it had double pin headers)
Second pic is my tidied up version,
Third is my sheet of four used for the UV mask, (in case the opacity from one wasn't good enough),
Last one is a pic of the PCB in use.

(I'm none the wiser - computing just doesn't float my boat, but I don't want my ignorance to sound like a virtue).

The 'Fritzing' CAD package is here, which might be of interest:

http://fritzing.org/home/

As with Easy PC and programs such as 'EMS' (to draw 2D/3D engineering drawings), it's free as they hope it will (and no doubt does), result in orders for PCBs.

I'll carry on fumbling around in PAINT

Pleased to say that I've finally got my Epson SX535 to do what it was never designed to do - to print onto acetate sheets, for which it has no settings.

Thanks to Joe for pointing me in the direction of 'Big Clive' on youtube, who sussed out what to do to get the printer to behave. (Epson's are noted for this shortcoming).

Hope that might interest someone.

(22-08-2015, 06:31 PM)Yorkie Wrote: [ -> ]First is his layout produced using Fritzing. (Not sure why it had double pin headers)

Could the double pin arrangement be to allow permanent connections to some pins in parallel to (or in lieu of) the header?

Another possibility is to allow for two parallel headers so that another board can be piggy-backed onto this one for further development? 

(22-08-2015, 06:31 PM)Yorkie Wrote: [ -> ]... (Not sure why it had double pin headers)...

Shields are often designed to stack in a "towering inferno" style. The double row of holes is probably for a row of pins to connect to the board below (probably an Arduino) and a row of sockets to provide test points and breakout signals - he probably meant for those to be there as that's how you use Arduinos

My chum has reported back to me thus:

"The redundant holes align with the Arduino's digital I/O and analog input pins but in this case were to be used for locating the shield. It turned out that they weren't necessary.  
Depending on what type of shield you are using depends on which pins will become active".

So, that's it then!