Dial up your PCB design abilities with an LED quantity management protect

The fantastic thing about Arduino improvement boards is that they allow you to leap proper into prototyping. Simply join the sensors, buttons, LEDs, or no matter different {hardware} you require to the Arduino’s I/O pins, code and flash a sketch, and also you’re in enterprise. However you may come to a stage the place you need one thing extra polished than a breadboard or perfboard. Whenever you attain that stage, you may comply with together with YouTuber Upir’s LED quantity knob mission to discover ways to design your first PCB. 

Upir selected to make use of an Arduino Leonardo board for this mission as a result of its ATmega32U4 microcontroller’s built-in USB HID performance. That implies that it may be configured to indicate up as a USB mouse or keyboard when plugged into any laptop, whatever the working system or software program that laptop runs. On this case, that makes it straightforward to ship keyboard shortcuts that alter the pc’s quantity. 

The {hardware} for this mission, along with the Leonardo itself, consists of a potentiometer knob, LEDs, and resistors. The sketch units the variety of lit LEDs to correspond to the present quantity degree. Upir first prototyped the circuit on a breadboard to check the sketch and features. Then he designed a devoted PCB protect for the Arduino. In his video under, Upir goes into element on each step of the PCB design course of in open supply KiCAD software program. This data is effective to anybody fascinated with studying the right way to create their very own PCBs.

If you happen to comply with Upir’s directions, both for this mission or an analogous design, you’ll find yourself with a set of information you could ship to any PCB fabrication service to get professional-quality boards.