I’ve been thinking more about these leds. If I want to add the heartbeat led. Is the approach basically to just wire an led to an output pin and blink it at the end of the loop?
I would like to have some optional status leds. Should they just be run parallel with power supplied to the ic’s or is there a better approach to these?
I was looking at the schematic for the arduino uno and the leds are not wired directly to rx and tx lines. I’m guessing these are turned on and off through code rather than a direct signal
So I think this will be the final if nobody catches anything. I'm thinking of just having the one power led with a little dip switch to cut power to it.
Do you think it’s more important to keep a safe distance between traces or to widen the traces? I did try to follow what you said with trace widths but avoided spots where it caused too much crowding.
Ok I think this might be it! I thought about it more and you were totally right, makes way more sense to have the led monitor the logic power. Widened all traces to at least 20 mil and increased all thru hole pads. Do I need more vias to stitch the top and bottom ground pours? (I have no ratlines left). No DRC errors and all nets check out according to EasyEDA. Thanks for all the help!
yeah it's pretty small just about 2.75x3" or so. Haha I hear ya this is only the second board I've done, but the other was simpler than this. This board really is feeding the addiction more for me though. I can't wait to do the next!
Your CAD program should check and give any errors where the design rules are not adhered to, including trace spacing. I use KiCad and JLPCB and I have had no problems with this. I have no idea where KiCad got the rules from but I can change them if I want.
Hi,
Sorry to come in late, but why build a controller on the PCB, when just some headers and a Nano would do the job.
Also make it easier to debug once assembled.
Use the on board LED as heartbeat.
Its easier to source and mount a Nano, than all the required components for an onboard controller.
Yeah I get that. This is a circuit I’ve already had working for a while now. I want to get into designing more from scratch boards and this felt like a good one to venture into. I also think it’s just way more finished and pro looking at the end of the day to ditch the arduinos and tons of daughterboards all wired together. You can get rid of any of the unnecessary components also which is a plus. Sometimes enable pins and such are held to disable shutdowns and such. It’s nice to have control over those for deep sleep without having to go in and desolder components
So I just got the boards back the other day. Got everything soldered and ready to go but couldn't get the boot loader to burn. I looked back over the schematic and noticed that I somehow put SCK on pin 32 instead of 17. I have no idea how I did this. I looked over everything a bunch but it slipped by me.
Is there anyway of redefining the SCK in software?
There's a pdf a few posts back. The jpg from EasyEDA just seem to always look like garbage. I took a jumper from the USBtinyISP and just held it to the correct pin on the atmega and it burned the bootloader just fine.
No other way through software for it? Even if I burn the boot loader and upload the sketch while holding the wire. It would be nice to have the sketch run with the wiring as is.
For this design? I hand soldered everything for the prototype for this one. This is probably the 4th reincarnation of this. I was reworking the power section and the motor driver through advice of the forum a while back. Everything worked great on the final prototype before this design, but I decided to switch to an smd version of the 328 and it came back to bite me.
