Please check this diagram

[russbow]

I am close to making the PCB for my weather toy. I would appreciate it if you could have a look at the attached PCB idea before I commit it to the pot.

I have used Diptrace, my first attempt at the application. The view is from the component side.

It is based on the Picaxe datalogger. The vertical row of pins on the left are for the 433mhz RX, antenna extrepe top L. The picaxe is the 18x, with the RTC. The SDA & RTC are taken out to a 4 pin header, and then the FRM 101 serial chip is on the right.

At first I was concerned thet the "silk" did not show the component connections, but it all seems to tally up.......unless I've missed something.

Thanks, Russ

 

[BeanieBots]

The "silk" should not show the connections.
You should have two layers, normally red and blue.
If you make a PCB from that diagram, all the crossovers will be connected!

 

[russbow]

See what you say B.B. I don't have facilities for proper fabrication, so I tape the pic to a bit of vero, and then to a bit of copper clad. I use the vero as the drilling jig. Get quite accurate results. I then rule the tracks with a dalo penand etch. All "top" links have come out green on the pic, they will be wire links. I am not using double sided. Just tried the Diptrace to save drawing on squared paper. Saved a lot of time.

 

[BeanieBots]

That should be OK then, I thought you were going to send the file to a manufacturer.

OMG, Dalo pens!
I remeber them, nothing, nothing, nothing, massive great blob, nothing

Have a go at the laser printer transfer method. Not always perfect but a lot more consistant than a Dalo pen.

 

[russbow]

The laser thingy is next step. Got to go on a mega scrounge, only got inkjet. There's been some good threads on here recently about the laser transfer.
But.... as far as you can decipher, any glaring mistakes in the cct? After all, we don't want to run out of Dalo, do we.

 

[MartinM57]

Hi Russ

Unless you've posted the complete schematic (aka circuit diagram) here before, any reviewer would need that first - it's impossible to decipher whether you have any mistakes on the layout since there is nothing to reference it to for checking - it's probably beyond people's willingness to even check if the chips are correctly powered as they would have look up the pin assignments for each chip, follow them round the diagram and try to deduce whether they are connected correctly or not

EDIT:For example, 3 of the 4 legs of the 18X at the bottom left go to pads that don't seem to go anywhere - but the pads on the FRM chip that are not connected to anything don't go anywhere. So is this right or not? - probably only you can say...

If you use Diptrace correctly (ie draw the schematic and then create a board layout from the schematic) then you will have no errors, as long as:
- you use the Check Design facility in the PCB layout program (and it reports no errors)
- make sure that the Renew Design from Schematic menu item is used right at the end to really confirm that the PCB connections match the schematic

Hope this helps - an investment of a bit of time in understanding Diptrace is, IMHO, well worth it...

 

[russbow]

Thanks Martin. I clearly need to play with diptrace a lot more. I just used it in manual routing mode as a way of getting round freehand drawing. As you say, not a lot of use for anyone else to follow. Guess the only way is to drill it and etch it, which is what I would have done with the freehand version.

Shall post a pretty picture of the "Dalo Delight" when finished. Meantime deeper looks into the software.