Simple design Arduino UNO shield

Hi, (assuming for now this is not PCBWay spam, although they tend to spam):
If you have no experience with electronic design as you say, nor have used a PCB CAD package (it's not the same as Fusion 360 for 3D modeling) then it's a very vertical climb to go from zero knowledge to an assembled board.

It's going to be a multi-step learning process.
I strongly suggest you at least prototype what you want using other shields or breadboards, get that working, and then after that invest some time learning a CAD package (whether that's EAGLE, or KiCAD or otherwise).

Finally, once you have experience with a CAD package and have created a design, then some of the output files will be supplied to the PCB manufacturer, in order for them to build the blank board and then populate it (if you're not prepared to solder it yourself).

No spam here. 

I have some experience with electronic design, very basic, college, many years ago. 

What I meant is that I havent been in touch with it for a long time, and Im refreshing stuff, and all with new software and technologies, so im basically starting from zero.

I have my prototype on breadboard, functioning, on a little robot that moves around, but the components on top of it are making everything more and more bulky and complicated, and I want to put them all together in a shield (some transistors, regulators, piezo, resistors, capacitors, few diodes, LEDs, accelerometer, 555 timer, barometric and temp sensor, some headers for plugging, ultrasonic sensors,  one OLED screen, etc ).

Like I said, I have all working on breadboard, but id like to have a shield, and also, on the shield itself, add a mini breadboard glued/screwed to the surface, for adding extra stuff.

Since I havent done this before, I was going to make a simple 555 astable circuit that I need for generating a very specific signal (for another project), then have that manufactured/assembled by one of those Chinese companies, and see how it turns out. This board will have only 5 components: the 555, two resistors, a capacitor, and a 3-pin header (power and signal output), and of course, four holes for mounting.

Hi,

In that case, if you have a breadboarded version functioning for your 555, then you're ready to move on to getting the circuit diagram into a CAD package, and then using that to get the PCB designed in the same CAD package. 

If you've not used EAGLE before, you may wish to just directly move to KiCad (it's free, and perhaps easier to get up to speed from scratch).

There's a KiCad video here:

https://youtu.be/5Be7XOMmPQE

(and associated discussion for that video is here: /technologies/open-source-hardware/b/blog/posts/kicad-6-unofficial-quick-start-training-guide-video

Incidentally, KiCad already has a built-in 'component' that is an Arduino shield, so that will speed things up too.

That will get you to the point that you have the circuit and PCB created. From there you can move on to getting it submitted to a PCB manufacturer.

If you wish to use EAGLE, then the EAGLE supplied user manual is pretty good, but there are probably many good videos for it too, I just don't know of them.

Hi,

In that case, if you have a breadboarded version functioning for your 555, then you're ready to move on to getting the circuit diagram into a CAD package, and then using that to get the PCB designed in the same CAD package. 

If you've not used EAGLE before, you may wish to just directly move to KiCad (it's free, and perhaps easier to get up to speed from scratch).

There's a KiCad video here:

https://youtu.be/5Be7XOMmPQE

(and associated discussion for that video is here: /technologies/open-source-hardware/b/blog/posts/kicad-6-unofficial-quick-start-training-guide-video

Incidentally, KiCad already has a built-in 'component' that is an Arduino shield, so that will speed things up too.

That will get you to the point that you have the circuit and PCB created. From there you can move on to getting it submitted to a PCB manufacturer.

If you wish to use EAGLE, then the EAGLE supplied user manual is pretty good, but there are probably many good videos for it too, I just don't know of them.

Awesome,, saw the KiCad video and Im downloading it for my Mac now. 

I will give it a try, the learning curve seems less steep than Fusion 360.

Thanks for the advise.

I watched your tutorial, very nice. Many thanks for sharing the knowledge.

You say on the video that you were coming from Eagle, If I may ask, what made you move away from Eagle?

I originally considered Fusion360 Electronics (which is where all Eagle functionality is migrating) because of their strong online community and because I though it was going to be a mature solution pretty quick., but I could be mistaken there.

Hi,

I switched mainly because KiCad in its release 6 became easy to use, and I no longer had any reason to stick with EAGLE. EAGLE is great, it does some things better than KiCad, but KiCad does some things better too.

EAGLE is difficult to get going with, but things are very productive once you have got familiarity with it. KiCad does some things in a more clunky fashion, but on the other hand KiCad has some excellent features as well, that at least earlier releases of EAGLE are missing.

I've done several hundred PCBs using EAGLE (since version 4 of it), so I was very familiar with it, but I didn't want to upgrade with a monthly cost (which would be inevitable as soon as a PCB design was large or had more than 2 layers).

Since I transitioned to KiCad at the start of the year, I've created a dozen PCBs, and I will likely stick with KiCad now even if the EAGLE licensing model ever changed. Often a commercial package feels like lower risk, but EAGLE ownership changed, and licensing models changed, so I don't trust it will always be around in a license model that I could be happy with. Similarly, Altium's Circuit Studio should in theory feel like low-risk because it has a commercial organization behind it, but there has been no new release of it in two years.

KiCad on the other hand, is free and well supported by the developers even without a support contract (I raised a bug report and it was resolved in a dot release within weeks), has a large community too, and in active development, so if you ask a question on a forum you're likely to get an answer very quickly. That might not work for all organizations understandably, who might wish to purchase support, but for my use I just no longer had a need to continue with EAGLE.

Thats a great summary of a lot of good reasons. I completely understand your position. Thanks for sharing your view.