Thank you to everyone who came to the workshop! We couldn’t do this without you!
This PCB was designed with two levels of functionality. Depending upon your desired level of difficulty and time commitment, you can adjust the parts that populate your board. It is recommended to do level one and two on the same board if you want to do both circuits; however, they do operate independently of one another.
The LED footprint on the PCB is backward. Generally speaking, as is the case with our board, PCB manufacturers will include a circular pad for the anode (positive lead) and a square pad for the cathode (negative lead) on a diode. With the best of intentions, we included this feature as well as a footprint showing a circle with a flat side which would correspond to the negative pole of a dome LED. This did not work in our favor quite simply because we got it wrong.
Precisely 9 days before the start of this workshop, we finished troubleshooting the board design. All of our issues could be traced back to discrepancies between what was printed on the silkscreen and the actual circuit. Lessons have been learned and the next iteration is well on its way to becoming a very solid platform to teach/learn with.