I've bought a bunch of these little radio shack pcboards, and while they work great for my project, i think the price is a bit extreme.
I've been looking at etching your own boards, and I'm thinking about giving it a try.
I already have a drill press, so while time consuming, i could drill the few holes my design has.
I was looking for software to import a image, and draw the copper lines over top of my template and export that as a pdf to print on my laser printer.
But I've had no luck, but after hours of cropping and resizing radioshacks preview image to actual size, and drawing the only copper i need on top, and added dots for the holes, that i assume would just be white dots in the middle of the black bar in the image, so when copper is removed, a blank area is left there.
Wow its been a long day. I've soldered 2 boards so far, after making a trips to the shack in several inches of snow.
All I am hoping is that someone with some experience at this can slap my little image here and make a new image with my lines more cleaner.
Again this is actual size, which is important or my led's won't line up with the plastic reflectors I've already cast out of plastic.
and I'm sure the copper pads could be larger than shown, but the led hole placement as compared to the radioshack board is critical.
there is just so many extra copper on these boards that is not needed for my project, so i figured it would be better to reduce it to just my layout.
Top rail is positive
Bottom rail is Ground
The two rails on each side are for led's
positive, connecting to the top rail
ground, connecting to the middle
from the middle are the the negative side of the led they go in the middle using a resistor to connect to the T shaped thing, which is the middle pin of a NPN Transistor.
Left NPN pin connects to the ground rail at the bottom
and the right pin connects to a hole near the bottom, which will have a wire connecting to a arduino digital pin
After many hours of troubleshooting, and not to mention learning the difference between a NPN and PNP transistor by way of buying the wrong one at ratshack, I find this design to work quite well for lighting 8 Led's powered by 12 volts, and turned on and off from the arduino.
I really think I've learned a lot from you guys on these forums.
Just a week ago i did not even know where to start, and now its ready to be put together.
I appreciate all the help.
Here is a picture of my crappy soldering job
btw, its a little different that the pcb i want to etch, but it shows what I've done so far, that is by no means great, but it works.
and i learned a lot doing it.
thanks again for the help.
