The GnuVision Blog

Got a set of PCB’s (designed using gEDA tools) today - this is my second attempt at using gEDA tools (after the AVR Badge experiment).

The board will carry a MAX232 to perform TTL<->RS232 level shifting.
The design files will be made available soon …
Lots of students are starting blogs these days - check out this […]

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It was Insignia day 2 today - and it was time for the hack-the-badge contest! I reached the CS department by 2:30 and
saw that there were only a few participants. I began by describing how the badge PCB was built using GNU/Linux tools. This was followed by a very brief introduction to the Attiny […]

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Got the badge PCB today afternoon.

It looks good - except that I made a big blunder - forgot to take a mirrored image! Anyway, very, very happy to
see my first `built with GNU/Linux’ product !! I am off to get a soldering iron to test it out …

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It seems the footprint library of `PCB’ has some serious problems - I am taking my second layout to my Kunnamkulam friend - if he is not satisfied with this, there will be no badge to hack for Insignia 2006.
Update: PCB designer friend seems to be satisfied with the layout I have generated … […]

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Finally, I have made some sense out of gschem and pcb, the gEDA tools. Schematic capture is easy; what is difficult is using PCB. Here is the schematic of the badge:

A major problem with pcb is lack of footprints for some of the parts used in the circuit - the microswitch and the button […]

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Finished writing the code for the badge; nothing fancy - just 4 red LED’s and a switch. The muC goes to power down mode after executing some initialization routines - the current consumption is less than 1uA in this mode. The switch connected to PB4, when pressed, will result in a pin change […]

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