How many of you do PCB designs?
I’ve been learning Eagle, slowly. I just wrote about a blog post about my process going through three iterations of board layout for my FastLED powered 7 LED pendant. It’s fun stuff, and it really lets you pack powerful components into tiny packages.
If anyone else had made PCBs for FastLED projects, please share!
(let me know if this is too far off topic for this group)
Out of curiosity, is there software that could take your design and come up with the “perfect” solution?
Well, there is probably software that can create a “functional” solution. But correct circuitry is only half the battle of designing a PCB. This board has to take up space in a 3 dimensional object, and things in that object need to attach to it.
Human guided design and engineering comes in when trying to make it fit the way you want, and still be functional. It’d take some pretty sophisticated software (AI?) to fully understand 100% of all constraints.
@Alex_Wayne That’s exactly what I am thinking - I have no idea on the matter, but I find it hard to imagine Intel design their CPU’s by hand
@Alex_Wayne omg thanks so much for posting this, I’m right about to start learning about making custom pcbs and this will be of huge help. Of course the waiting part sucks on any project (tinkerers are often of the impatient type), but it beats thousands cables 
Happy to contribute For anyone else wanting to learn, I highly recommend this book http://www.amazon.com/Make-Your-Own-PCBs-EAGLE/dp/0071819258 by Simon Monk.
Actually, all integrated circuits, including CPUs, are all done by hand for the most part. Positioning of components, layers, path routing, all of that is done by hand. Sure there are suggestions made by the software on what is a better placement of certain things, but ultimately, it’s several white coat wearing humans that does it. And it gets scrutinized by several other white coat wearing humans before a machine ever takes over.
Just about any major PCB design application will have an “auto-router” in them which, once told where your parts are, will attempt to route all the paths for you. However, and particularly so with EagleCAD, it’s not smart about what to route where. So you may end up with power paths right next to signal paths which can cause problems. Many times it can’t route a board completely where I can do it by hand with no problems.
The more higher end ones (think Altium) can do a (much) better job because they have specific rules built into the software that it takes into account when routing. There are other benefits as well, but with that comes cost. Last I checked, Altium Designer 15 is $3,995 with a $195/mo subscription. You get what you pay for, seriously.
Having been designing PCBs for a couple of years now, like you, I too have gone through several iterations for different designs and in the process learned quite a bit, including little tricks of the trade. Unfortunately life has caught up with me in the past several months and I haven’t touched anything. I haven’t even put up my FastLED controlled xmas lights this year. Blimey!
I’ve completed a couple of projects using PCBs designed in Eagle and fabricated by OSH Park. Routing power by hand and having the software complete the rest has worked well for me.
i developed an under-board for Arduino Nano. Screw terminals for power-in and power/data out along with a RTC / Temp sensor. It’s primary goal is to have a standalone 2812 controller to facilitate light art.
It’s in dev state but i have some spares so if anyone is interested, just lat me know.
