Overview:
During CPR E 186, our focus was to create a Arduino based system to control RGB LEDs to the beat and level of music. Our design focused on a header board on top of the Arduino that was able to handle the power, data, and Bluetooth communication to a host computer that would handle the audio processing. In the end, we had to remove the Bluetooth as the Arduino didn’t have enough processing power to handle Bluetooth communication along with the RGB control so we just used a USB cable.
My role:
My main focus during the project was to create the PCB design, make to work with the Arduino, order the parts, and to solder all the parts together. In the picture above, you can see the prototype created on a breadboard. The final version used a PCB with a dedicated power circuitry.
Skills gained:
I had little to no knowledge of how to design PCBs and how to pick parts to fit on a board. I had to learn to use a PCB design software and to make sure all the of the vias worked correctly. Surprisingly, I only had one small problem with the Bluetooth power trace which wasn’t used in the final version.
Resources used:
Our team used ETG, EasyEDA, DigiKey, Arduino Studio, and the Processing framework.