My name is Jacob, I’ve been playing with arduino compatibles for a few years, but have no formal training and am missing many fundamentals. I have a history in software dev and have made a few simple PCBs, so I’m not starting from scratch, but definitely don’t have the comfort level that I feel I should have with electronics. This makes it especially difficult to talk with others because while I have some general idea of what I’m doing, the details are often much more fuzzy and I end up stumbling my way to a solution rather than engineering it.
I’d really like to learn power electronics. Low-speed digital at predefinted voltages and using out of the box regulators is simple enough for me, but I’d like to learn how to effectively use mains power and do DC-DC conversion. I guess working with (charging/balancing/discharging) series battery packs safely fits into that category as well. Most of what I struggle with is centered around that type of stuff right now.
Day 1: Made the CE header. I’m using eagle and not KiCad… hopefully that’s not heresy here. The videos are using KiCad 4 instead of 5 and if I’m going to watch a video that doesn’t match what I’m using I’d rather use something I’m familiar with. At least I’m not paying for Altium?
I decided to make it from scratch instead of copying the existing libraries. I have some experience here so this was a quick and easy process. That’s not completely true… It was quick and easy, and the double check looked good, but when I went to make the package I noticed that 4 of the 16 pins were named incorrectly. Oops. Always better to do your third checks after looking at something else so your brain has to start from scratch with them.
PS: What is the preferred etiquette here? Should I edit the previous post or post a new one if there’s new information?