OK, I’m into electronics, I know you get that. I’m a hobbyist (enforced non profit activities), but I’ve said it before, this is just for fun. I try new things, sometimes they work sometimes they don’t. I have the basic tool-age, soldering iron, scalpel, cutters and so on, But.., the the major stumbling block for me was the lack of advanced test equipment, development gear and resources to master what I already know and to be able to move on.

For many years now, the people who had the right stuff also had alot of disposable income. Granted, the price of an IC wouldn’t normally break the bank, but if you wanted to make a nice looking PCB to put it on, well.., say no more. The costs would spiral out of control and before you knew it, the cost of your project couldn’t be justified. In my case this meant shelving way to many projects before they even got started. Then came the dangling carrot.

With the advent of the microcontoller, PLD, FPGA and other programable components, came the need to be able to design and program such components via a computer of some kind. A fair amount of households have one and they are mostly connected to the internet some how. This fact alone has allowed suppliers of these components to get thier name out there and to give you a demonstration of thier good work. Normally there will be restrictions on the use of the demonstration but I have found a collection of tools that allow me to take my project from the drawing board to the field for next to nothing.

Welcome to my tool box.

Today I will be talking about  

EAGLE  Light Edition

EAGLE stands for Easily Applicable Graphical Layout Editor. It’s purpose in life is to allow you to draw circuit diagrams and to lay out PCBs for your project. They have been throwing this amazing piece of software at us for years and I believe the only way to apprieciate it is to use it.

So how does it work? Well, it is basically two pieces of software intemately connected to each other to allow you to first draw a circuit then using this circuit, transfer it to a double sided PCB. The interface, although a little daunting at first is common to both parts of the software so that when you have mastered one side, your good to go on the other. EAGLE allows you to draw your circuit, filter out things such as component values and to also label components in the name of clarity. You can specify what size a real life track has to be on the PCB you can test the circuit according to a set of rules before you move on to actual track laying.

The PCB section allows you to lay tracks, position your components on two layers (top and  bottom) and to generate polygons which can be used as ground planes amongst other thing. It also has an Auto Route facility which works really well for simple circuits and not too bad for the more complex. Eagle can also process the layout to allow you to send it away to be done professionally. In fact, some PCB fabrcation houses accept Eagles .brd format directly making it even easier to get it made.

But the one thing that makes Eagle stand out from the rest is the component libray. It’s huge as standard, and potentially has no limits. The software has been out there for so long that many component manufactures have published libray ad-ons for thier components enabling the user to quickly implement these components into applications without re-inventing the wheel every time something new comes out. And there is a huge community out there ready to help if you get stuck, perfect.

Below is a third party video tutorial which explains somes of the tools that Eagle uses.

Conclusion, all that I have mentioned is not all that there is. Play with Eagle and you will be rewarded. The results i have had as a hobbyist have been amazing and I truly believe this to be the only free PCB CAD software for the hobbyist.

Next time I will be talking about MikroBasic Pro for the PIC.

See you soon.