Electronics 2: Circuit Design

‘Electronic Circuit Design’ is an introductory class to designing and building your own circuit boards. Students will learn basic electronic circuit design principles hands-on. We will use an open-source software program, Fritzing, to create the pcb design in order to connect all the electronic components and will then be milling the pcb boards on FabLab’s very own milling machine, an environmentally-friendly process. Students will start with a simple project: a simple LED (light-emitting diode) blink circuit, that has a switch to turn the LED on and off. This project will use standard through-hole electronic components.

The final project will be for a 7-segment display controller, an electronic display device for displaying numbers that is widely used in digital clocks and electronic meters. This last project will use smaller surface-mounted components. Students will learn about basic electronic concepts (voltage, current, resistance) and will learn to create circuits with breadboards for prototyping and then replicate the circuit for the final pcb layout. This course is designed for students with some or no electronics/programming experience.

This class is being developed to be launched for Spring/Summer 2012.
This class will be hosted in partnership with UCSD Extension.