Blog

A Three-Way Prototyping Board for Awkward Through-Hole Components

shabaz

Table of Contents Introduction What Problems Does it Solve? Working with Dual-in-Line (DIL)Headers Working With Pi Pico and other Wide DIP Devices Easy Desoldering Easy Grounding Large Screw Terminals and Connectors Support Summary Introd...
- 14 Mar 2025
Half-Hour Project: Building a Simple Audio Amplifier

shabaz

Table of Contents Introduction How Does it Work? Building It Using It Summary Introduction A while back I built a little audio amplifier based on a circuit found in an old book. The amplifier performed reasonably OK (by that I mean adequat...
- 5 Mar 2025
KiCad 8: Working with Circuit Simulations!

shabaz

Table of Contents Introduction Create the Schematic Adding SPICE models Adding Simulation Voltages Running a Simulation Plotting Frequency Response Simulating Parts of a Circuit (Excluding some Components) Summary Introduction The recent release...
- 5 Sep 2024
Bridgetek EVE Series - Touch Enabled Graphical User Interfaces

BRT-Marketing

Bridgetek’s products include the EVE family of display controllers which make it easy to add attractive and fully featured touch-enabled graphical user interfaces to existing and new product designs. To improve the user experience and functiona...
- 26 Jan 2024
High Voltage Isolated Measurement Board: Initial Prototype

shabaz

Introduction In an earlier blog post Very Low-Cost Pulse-Width Modulation (PWM), and Isolated Analog Measurements a method was discussed to perform isolated analog measurements at a sub-£1/$1 price. It was fine for slow-ch...
- 13 Dec 2023
Very Low-Cost Pulse-Width Modulation (PWM), and Isolated Analog Measurements

shabaz

This is just an ultra-quick blog post about an interesting circuit. I wanted to be able to measure an output up to about 1kV, and so I really desired the measurement to be isolated! I also wanted it to be cheap. This blog post shows the method I won&...
- 24 Nov 2023
Writing Decent Blogs: A Blog Checklist!

shabaz

Table of Contents Introduction: What’s a Blog Checklist? Good Flow, Bad Flow? Value Fun to Read? Is the Content Appropriate? Is the Content Relevant? Use a Table of Contents Write an Introduction Write a Summary Make Use of the Editor To...
- 12 Nov 2023
GitHub for Beginners: Feature Development for Projects

shabaz

This blog post is a joint effort by Jan Cumps and shabaz Table of Contents Introduction IDE Capabilities JetBrains Products Visual Studio Code A Suggested Strategy Fork the Project Repository Cloning your Reposi...
- 11 Aug 2023
Using Buses in Circuits with KiCad 7

shabaz

This topic is a bit fiddly to describe in words, so I hope the video will suffice. This blog won't have much text : ( I feel like a Ronin when I'm not having to type though! : ( https://youtu.be/T5Zy_BWg3Tw
- 29 Jul 2023
Vintage Curvy PCB Traces with KiCad 7

shabaz

Table of Contents Introduction What’s Required? Running the Plugin Fixing Issues Summary Introduction Old-school printed circuit boards (PCBs) often had wavy copper traces! They were done manually by rolling out UV-light-blocking crepe sti...
- 3 Jul 2023
Working with KiCad 7: Importing EAGLE files

shabaz

Table of Contents Introduction Importing the project Enabling Schematic and PCB Updates Resolving PCB Problems Zones (Copper planes) Rule Areas (Keepout regions) Component Footprints Resolving Schematic Problems Text Sizes Drawing Frame ...
- 27 Jun 2023
Problem Solving with KiCad 7 and Python: Getting Data and Moving Components on Circuit Boards

shabaz

Table of Contents Introduction Python Console Getting Footprint Information Python writing Python Trying it Out Holes in a Geometric Pattern Summary Introduction One of the great advantages of KiCad is that it supports a decent language for scri...
- 25 Jun 2023
GitHub for Beginners: Working with PyCharm and other JetBrains IDEs

shabaz

Table of Contents Introduction Cloning a Repository Creating a Branch and Publishing the Branch Editing Code and Committing your Code Creating a Pull Request Merging the Code to the main branch Creating your Next Feature Viewing Branches Graphicall...
- 24 Jun 2023
GitHub for Beginners: Incrementally Adding Features to your Code

shabaz

Table of Contents Introduction What is GitHub and Version Control, and Why is it useful? What Really Happens Installing Software Cloning (Checking out) Code Creating a Branch and Publishing the Branch Editing Code and Committing Code Creating a Pul...
- 23 Jun 2023
Inkplate 2

ralphjy

Back in December of last year I backed a Kickstarter campaign by Soldered Electronics for the Inkplate 2 - a 2.13" e-paper display with an ESP32 microcontroller. I received my unit about a month ago, but have been busy with design challenges and...
- 16 Jun 2023
Oscillator design

strb

I was surfing the net looking for inspiration to build something new to me when I stumbled across Building a Voltage-Controlled Oscillator (VCO) by shabaz . His blog post inspired me quite a lot, but also showed me the amount of work a...
- 8 Jan 2023
Rapidly learning KiCad PCB Software within 5 days: And where I got to, a year on!

shabaz

It’s been almost exactly one year since I decided to try using KiCad, to migrate off EAGLE CAD. I was a newcomer to KiCad, but it was possible to feel comfortable enough with KiCad 6 within a week, to the point of producing my first PCB with it...
- 28 Dec 2022
Easy, Cost-Effective Bluetooth LE (BLE) with Dialog DA14531MOD

shabaz

Table of Contents Introduction What is it? Working with the Module KiCAD Symbol and Footprint Debugger Tool Software Development Building Code Controlling an LED Running the Firmware from RAM Connecting and Controlling the BLE Device Writing the Fi...
- 18 Jul 2022
Energy Saving: Building a Microcontroller-based System Power Controller

shabaz

Table of Contents Introduction Using It I2C Instruction Set (a) Wake every n seconds (n is between 5 and 255) (b) Wake every n minutes (n is between 1 and 255) (c) Read Inputs (d) Write Outputs (e) Write to RAM (f) Read from RAM (g) Set RTC Time (...
- 28 Jun 2022
AUDIO MEASURING SYSTEM BASED ON HP 8903A

michaelkellett

AUDIO MEASURING SYSTEM BASED ON HP 8903A This is a project that brings together a few long-term plans of mine and (I hope) combines them into a useful system for measuring audio devices. The key components are: HP 8903A – a mainly analog...
- 27 Feb 2022
Building a USB-C USB-UART Board

shabaz

Introduction USB-UART devices provide an interface between a host computer and a peripheral device, connecting between the USB port and a serial connection called a serial UART. Nearly all microcontrollers have a serial UART, and sometimes it can be ...
- 17 Feb 2022
Building cheap case for USB audio card called SkySong

jgrzybowski

Cheap case for USB audio card called SkySong Goal+ cheap and useful case for SkySong USB audio card;+ appearance of device suitable to wooden and black case of headphone amp;+ case must increase total weight of device due to lightweight USB card, whi...
- 5 Feb 2022
Building cheap headphone amplifier integrated with DAC

jgrzybowski

Cheap headphone amplifier integrated with DAC Goal+ good quality headphone amplifeier;+ good quality DAC;+ integrated device for cost reduction (one power supplly and one housing);+ headphone amp. and DAC board must have common voltage of power suppl...
- 22 Jan 2022
Building compact size cubic micro-atx PC case from plexi and 3D printed parts

jgrzybowski

Building compact size cubic micro-atx PC case from plexi and 3D printed parts Goal+ cheap PSs dedicated for special purposes (like VHS grabbing and video compressing);+ based on standard size components (for excellect ratio efficiency / cost);+ as sm...
- 22 Jan 2022
KiCad 6 Unofficial Quick Start Training / Guide Video

shabaz

Table of Contents Introduction Video Contents PCB Editor Configuration Screenshots File->Board Setup->Design Rules->Constraints File->Board Setup->Design Rules->Pre-defined Sizes File->Plot File->Plot->Generate Drill Fi...
- 17 Jan 2022