today on the hookup i'm going to show
you how to take your hacked together diy
projects or maybe other people's
projects
and make them look super professional by
building custom pcbs
i'm going to walk you through all the
steps and everything you need to know to
make your first pcb
you don't need to be an electrical
engineer and the process is actually
easier than you think
look it doesn't matter how simple a
project is if it looks like this
some people are always going to say that
it's too complicated or that it's a fire
hazard
or maybe even both in almost all of my
diy project videos i get people
commenting that i should just make them
and sell them myself
but there are three big problems with
that number one
i don't want to have to deal with
returns and warranty claims
number two if i was fairly compensating
myself for my time investment they
wouldn't be a sweet diy deal anymore
and number three most of my projects
don't exactly look professional and even
though they're perfectly
safe and reliable they definitely look
diy
but pcbs are the answer to that printed
circuit boards or pcbs are not
complicated
they're just a non-conductive material
with either holes or pads for mounting
your electrical components and then
small
embedded connections called traces that
connect the components together like
wires
so basically this is the exact same as
this
but it's a lot nicer looking just to get
everyone on the same page
let's talk about the three basic parts
of a printed circuit board
first there are two ways to attach a
component to a circuit board there's
surface mount where you have these
little copper pads on the board and you
lay your components on top
and then there's through hole where you
stick the ends of the components through
the board
and then solder them from the bottom if
you're new to pcbs and new to soldering
then through-hole is definitely the way
to go but the components tend to be
bigger so your design won't be as
compact
speaking of soldering on your pcbs you
don't want your solder to go everywhere
you only want it to go around your
components
so to do that the rest of the board
including the traces is covered in a
thin
lacquer called a solder mask that
prevents the solder from sticking to it
leaving the solder only where you want
it as for the traces
most pcbs are double layer meaning the
tiny copper lines that act like wires
between the components can be on top
or on the bottom when you have a lot of
traces to route around the board
a double layer pcb makes it easier since
the traces can't cross over each other
the traces can also go through from the
top of the board to the bottom
and anytime you see a small hole without
a component in it that's probably a via
which is how the traces get from one
side to the other traces are just like
wires where if you're sending a lot of
amperage through one trace it's going to
need to be thicker than a trace that's
just carrying data
so some traces are going to be wider
than others and therefore use more
copper
additionally it's common for pcbs to
have an entire ground
plane which means that anything that
isn't a trace is actually connected to a
big copper pad
that leads to ground ground planes are
good because they reduce electrical
noise
and they help with heat dissipation but
they aren't completely necessary
i'm going to show you how to make one in
this video but it's probably overkill
for our board design
so now that we've got the basics down
let's take a look at a few pcbs to see
what i'm going to show you how to make
today
this board is an led controller called a
dige quad
made by the youtuber quindor you can see
that the bottom side of the board is
composed of through-hole components as
well as surface mount components
not only that but quindor has designed
all kinds of circuits to do voltage
regulation
logic shifting power smoothing and all
kinds of crazy stuff
even though this may be your ultimate
goal that is definitely not what we're
going to do today
today all we're going to do is take
pre-made circuits and connect them
together using pcbs instead of wires
turning something like this into this
the software that we're going to use is
easy eda which is a free online pcb
designing service with thousands of
parts in its database
to make the process of pcb creation easy
step one is to log into easy eda
and i'm going to use my google account
to do that after that go ahead and make
a new project
i'm going to be making a pcb for my
blinds project and specifically i'm
going to draw inspiration from a few
pcbs that my subscribers have already
made
and i'm going to make a sender board
with three ethernet jacks
and then three receiver boards that go
to each blind after you choose a name
for your project
easy eda will automatically open up
schematic mode
as i said before easy eda has a bunch of
pre-made parts so i'm just going to
start by using the search function
for the sender board i'll need the
esp8266 nodemcu
a buck converter a screw terminal and a
few ethernet jacks
i've had pretty good luck just searching
for the part number that's listed on the
amazon page
and sometimes when searching you'll find
an official part from the easy eda
or lcsc databases but most of the time
you're going to be using user
contributed parts
which i've found to be pretty reliable
since i'm just using common components
and pre-made circuits
i just ordered them off of amazon but
you could also order from a proper
electrical components company like lcse
if you're making a large order
or you just can't find the right part
for the right price on amazon
once you've got all your parts on your
schematic you need to go ahead and make
your connections
it's not super important to make your
connections look nice here
but it does make it easier to keep track
of them don't worry about overlapping
your connections on this page because
this isn't how the traces of your pcb
will actually look
once you've made all your connections
use the labels for vcc
ground 5 volts and any other connections
that you want to label in your project
next click on the design menu and then
convert to pcb
it'll probably tell you that some of
your nets are not connected
and that's to be expected nets are the
term used for the connections between
the pins on your pcb
and in our case we only used a small
fraction of the pins available on the
node nodemcu
so the rest of the nets for those are
open if you labeled all of your
connection you should be able to easily
see that all of the unfinished nets
aren't part of the connections that
you'll need
so go ahead and click no keep going to
get to the pcb page
in this page you can just keep the
default settings and then position your
components how you want them on your
final pcb
for me i want the ethernet jacks on the
back of the board and the node mcu
butt converter and terminal block on the
front to do this
select each component and change the
layer drop down to your desired
location there are a bunch of layers to
choose from
but the important ones for placing parts
are your top layer and bottom layer
which are the copper layers located on
the top and bottom respectively
at this point i also like to put labels
on my board you can not only add new
text to your board but you can edit the
text that you imported with your parts
and you can change or remove the
component labels that were automatically
generated
these labels should be part of either
the top silk screen or the bottom silk
screen since we want them labeled with
ink and not with copper
i'm going to put some general
instructions on my board label the
positive and negative terminals for my
12-volt connector
and assign each ethernet port to a
window and then last it's time for
routing which is figuring out a way to
get all of your traces connected without
overlapping each other
for complex boards with a bunch of small
parts routing is an art form and for
some things like antennas the length
shape and location of the traces has a
huge effect on performance
but for our board we can just use the
auto router
go up to the route menu and select auto
route
if your board isn't going to carry a lot
of power you can just leave the default
settings and hit run
but since we're going to be carrying a
decent amount of current on our 12 volt
vcc line
i want to make sure that those traces
are extra thick to do that i'll create a
design rule for the specific nets that
are carrying power
by hitting the design rule button
creating a new routing rule for a
thicker trace
and then assigning that rule to my five
volt vcc and ground nets
after the rules are set hit run and the
auto router should do its thing
sometimes it goes a little crazy and
creates some squiggly lines and if that
happens you can remove any unnecessary
turns by double clicking on the white
anchor points on that turn
if you wanted to create a ground plane
instead of the thick traces
you'd select the copper area tool tell
it that you want that copper plane to
apply to the ground net only
and then draw your area wherever you
want
again for this project i'm just going to
use traces for my grounds since a ground
plane is a little bit unnecessary
after routing give your board one last
look over i like to look at each layer
individually by clicking on the eyeball
in the layers menu
and then i zoom in really close to make
sure all the parts are aligned and all
the traces are connected where i want
them
then hit save next to actually get them
printed you're going to need to generate
what's called a gerber file
which is actually a collection of files
used to tell your pcb manufacturer how
to make your boards
so click on fabrication and then pcb
fabrication file it's going to recommend
that you check your project for design
rule violations which is probably a good
idea so go ahead and do that
in the next menu click generate gerber
to download a zip file containing all
the instructions for your pcb
this zip file can be used with any pcb
manufacturer so i'm going to use pcb way
since i've always had really great
service from them
they support my channel and their prices
are competitive at the pcbway website
enter the length and width of your pcb
into the instant quote window and then
on the next page you can select your
shipping method
and change any other settings you want
like maybe the color of your board
then go ahead and hit add to cart on the
next page you'll upload your gerber file
and then one of the pcb ways employees
will review your order to make sure that
there are no
serious design errors before sending it
into production before you check out
look down in the description of this
video i usually have a promo code to get
at least a few dollars off your first
order at pcboa.com
pcbway makes your pcbs really quickly
but how fast you get them in your hands
depends mostly on the shipping method
that you use
when your pcb order arrives it's time to
get soldering and since this is all
through-hull stuff it's a great way to
practice your skills if you're a novice
the key to soldering through-hole
components is to not try to touch the
solder to the iron
instead try to press the iron against
the pin and the hole on the pcb
and then touch the solder to that if you
screw up and get a big bead of solder
you can always go back and hit it again
with the iron and thanks to the solder
mask your blob should turn into a nice
tent like this
another thing you can decide at this
stage is whether you want your parts to
permanently be attached or if you want
to use female header pins to be able to
remove and switch out parts as needed
header pins are an extra cost but
they're well worth it in my opinion if
you can spare the extra height on your
board alright
so here it is this is the hello world of
pcb making
and a gateway drug into more complex
circuits and professional looking
projects
this pcb was actually made by a
subscriber and posted on the hook up
home automation facebook page
if you've made one of my projects into a
pcb i'd love if you could come share it
with the group
i've got links down in the description
to a few products made by my subscribers
and the gerber files for the pcbs from
this video i'm definitely not an expert
at this yet so if i missed something
important make sure to leave me a
comment and let me know
thank you so much to my awesome patrons
over at patreon for your continued
support on my channel
and if you're interested in supporting
my channel please check out the links
down in the description
if you enjoyed this video please
consider subscribing and as always
thanks for watching the hookup