Monday 21 December.

We met online, instead of meeting at the Shed.

Geoffrey Smith shared his experiences of designing and building small hardware devices.

Geoffrey demonstrated the process of making a surface mount PCB, including designing the circuit (nothing too advanced), designing the PCB and getting the design manufactured.

He used EasyEDA to design the board, and jlcpcb.com to create and assemble the board, and gave a couple of alternatives. He also gave us some tips to keep the cost of the board down.

He showed an example raspberry pi power supply design he has had manufactured and a new version that he will get made soon.
Finally he showed us some source code for his power supply project and some other code that could be used in other raspberry pi projects.

A recording of Geoffrey’s presentation is available at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9BNH-0CSwY

His power point slides can be downloaded here: Making Surface Mount PCBs.pptx

Links.
Designing PCB:
EasyEDA – https://easyeda.com/

Board Manufacturers:
PCB Way – https://www.pcbway.com
JLCPCB – https://www.jlcpcb.com

Various electronics related Youtube channels:
Phil’s Lab https://www.youtube.com/c/PhilS94
GreatScott https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6mIxFTvXkWQVEHPsEdflzQ
EEVblog https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2DjFE7Xf11URZqWBigcVOQ
Stephen Hawes – Building his own Pick and Place machine
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMf49SMPnhxdLormhEpfyfg
Robert Feranec https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJQkHVpk3A8bgDmPlJlOJOA
Bitluni https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCp_5PO66faM4dBFbFFBdPSQ
Electronoobs https://www.youtube.com/c/ELECTRONOOBS
Andreas Spiess https://www.youtube.com/c/AndreasSpiess
YetAnotherElectronicsChannel https://www.youtube.com/c/YetAnotherElectronicsChannel
How To Mechatronics https://www.youtube.com/c/HowToMechatronics
HBPowerall https://www.youtube.com/c/HBPowerwall
DIY Perks https://www.youtube.com/c/DIYPerks

Other links:
https://www.tindie.com/
https://www.jaycar.com.au/
https://core-electronics.com.au/
https://www.raspberrypi.org/
https://lcsc.com/
https://www.adafruit.com/
https://archive.org/details/EA1993/EA%201993-09%20September/mode/2up
http://www.siliconchip.com.au

Reduce Raspberry Pi Boot time
https://himeshp.blogspot.com/2018/08/fast-boot-with-raspberry-pi.html
Reduce Pi Power usage
https://learn.pi-supply.com/make/how-to-save-power-on-your-raspberry-pi/

Raspberry Pi Python Projects
Circuit Python – https://circuitpython.org/

We started the meeting with a brief “Public Soap Box” where we talk about code, technology and the meaning of life.