1) Lacking a clear vision of the project you are going to start.
Working with electronics is fun. One of the new trends in electronic circuit design is to rely completely on design and simulation software, often leaving out the build the circuit and the test it in the laboratory, with a multimeter and oscilloscope. Here are five very common mistakes that can materialize your worst nightmares or even take your sleep away for many days.
Whenever you start designing a circuit, you have to ask yourself five simple questions:
Why am I designing this circuit?
What is this circuit for?
How much budget do I have?
How important is this circuit within the integral project?
How much reuse do I have for what I’m doing?
At first glance they look like five trivial questions, but if you can’t give a precise answer to all five, stop working immediately, because you are already on the wrong path.What you want is not necessarily what you actually need and, above all, if you don’t know what you need you don’t even know where you are going.Thinking and acting rationally will save you money, and above all time.
2) Lacking a “top down” approach.
Every project, however complex, can be broken down into smaller areas.Think of a Formula 1 single-seater: it consists of a power unit, the chassis, aerodynamics and the electronic part.A Formula 1 team inside it is divided into departments, each department dealing with a “micro-area”.Engineers are in charge of the power unit, the body-builders work on the chassis and so on, because working individually on each element leads to focusing first on the points of intervention and development.A complex electronic project is no exception, breaking it down into micro-areas helps in design but above all helps identify problems and correct them more quickly.
3) Lacking network analysis.
Are you completely sure that what you want to design doesn’t already exist?If you have divided the project into micro-areas, you will notice that for example the area of the power supply has circuitry that is already available on the market, perhaps for just a few dollars.It is not worth designing it from scratch, it would take you far more time and money than you need.Re-using what already exists is absolutely winning to contain costs and save time in the global realization.
4) Draw heavily from other people’s projects and blindly build your circuits.
It is perhaps the most “seductive” mistake of all and apparently in contrast with point 4. Be careful! You have found a circuit on the net, you have had the PCB printed and … After having assembled it, it does not work.This happens because a circuit is rarely responsive to all your needs: even just an incorrectly sized element would break down and collapse the house of cards.What are the capacitor values?And resistors?Are the diodes correctly positioned?Always analyze the drawings before deciding to send them to realization, because once done you won’t be able to go back.
5) Perusing your computer while discarding your breadboard.
The software is an exceptional testing platform for the design of electronic circuits, particularly to verify the topology of a circuit. It allows you to reposition endlessly elements and to connect them in a different way without necessarily using all the components.This type of operation can be fine in a preliminary phase, but when the project starts to take serious shape you will have to go back to the lab and build it all on the breadboard, taking the necessary measurements with a multimeter and an oscilloscope.
Whenever you start working with electronics keep there five hints present in your mind, and you will succeed.
###Da sempre appassionato di tecnologia, soffro di insaziabile curiosità scientifica. Adoro sperimentare e approfondire le mie conoscenze sulle ultime novità sul mercato in termini di hardware, alta tecnologia e videogiochi.
Attratto e coinvolto nella prototipazione hardware dalla piattaforma Arduino, Raspberry Pi e Nvidia Jetson.###
###Always passionate about technology, I am suffering from insatiable scientific curiosity. I love experimenting and deepening of my knowledge on the latest news on the market in terms of hardware, hi-tech and video games.
Got attracted and involved in hardware prototyping by the Arduino platform, Raspberry Pi and Nvidia Jetson.###
