Designing shapes onto PCB artwork

[Brian Hoskins]

Hi everyone,

I've finally met a girl who's as geeky as I am (perhaps more so) and to celebrate this I thought it would be nice to make her an Electronic valentines card.

I'm still in the design stage at the moment but shortly I'll be wanting to design a PCB. I want to arrange a quantity of LEDs into two heart shapes, and I have a drawing of the shape and size that I'd like. The question is, how would I go about transfering that intended shape into a PCB artwork? I need to go from the hand drawing to a CAD layout somehow.

Any tips / ideas?

Thanks,

Brian

 

[jpanhalt]

Give her flowers -- roses preferred. There is no girl that geeky. Then impress her with the geek stuff.

John

Oh, in Eagle, just make a device with pins arranged in a heart shape.

 

[arhi]

++ for the flowers

as for the pcb artwork, donno what app you use for making pcb's and what is the way you use to make pcb .. for toner transfer you can just draw the pcb in any graphics program (photoshop, adobe ilustrator) . as you only need pads for the led's and few lines ..

 

[Brian Hoskins]

Flowers, pffft.

Ahh I forgot to mention that I use Eagle as my CAD layout program. But I'm not quite sure how one would go about creating a shape on it. I suppose I could create LED points on my hand drawn shape and then use co-ordinates to place them on my CAD layout.

I can't think of an easier way...

Brian

 

[Brian Hoskins]

There is no girl that geeky.

This girl is!

Oh, in Eagle, just make a device with pins arranged in a heart shape.

Yeah I understand I can make a shape that way, but I'm not confident that I can make an accurate heart shape in that manner. Hence I wanted a way of transferring my hand-drawn diagram somehow. I don't think it's feasible though so perhaps I'll have to measure some co-ordinates on my diagram and do it that way.

Brian

 

[jpanhalt]

Here, I did this in BRD, not new library. Is it what you had in mind for the shape? Just use arc and straight lines.

The zip file should open in Eagle. Not sure I got your girlfriend's name right. I used tPlace for the outline.

John

 

[microtexan]

If she is that geeky, don't you think she may have also found this forum and will know of your intentions and gift?

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

If she's that's geeky, she wouldn't appreciate hearts or flowers - be a TRUE romantic, buy her a new multimeter instead!.

 

[Hero999]

Here's where you can buy some pink LEDs, in sizes from 1.8mm to 8mm.

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I've seen ICs that play love me tender by Elvis when hooked up to 3V and a piezo transducer but I can't remember were.

 

[Brian Hoskins]

Here, I did this in BRD, not new library. Is it what you had in mind for the shape? Just use arc and straight lines.

Hi John - that's a very good attempt at a heart shape, I'm very impressed! I didn't actually want to lay out a heart shape in the artwork though, I wanted to place LED footprints in such a manner that they would represent a decent heart shape. I've managed to draw some decent heart shapes, but the problem is deciding strategic positions for the LEDs to obtain the best effect. LEDs will need to be present at all the peaks and troughs of the shape, and then I'll need to work out an equal distance between them to distribute the rest. After that I need to transfer my work into a PCB layout. The main point of my question was to ask if anyone else on here has tackled a similar problem before and how did they go about it.
Respect is due for taking such a positive interest, even though I'm not asking anyone to do the work for me. +Rep coming your way!

If she is that geeky, don't you think she may have also found this forum and will know of your intentions and gift?

If she's that's geeky, she wouldn't appreciate hearts or flowers - be a TRUE romantic, buy her a new multimeter instead!.

She is that geeky, but she's a computer geek rather than Electronic. She's into programming and stuff like that which, being an Electronics hobbyist, I also have an interest in. On our first date she turned up wearing a small square PCB for a ring, so I think that classes as fairly geeky!
But no, I don't think there's any danger of her being a member of this forum because she's more a computer geek than Electronic. Although she does take a lot of interest in the stuff I do!

No matter how geeky the girl is, she always responds to romance. It's burned into a female's DNA. An Electronic card that flashes hearts and scrolls her a message is completely a 1-off gift that nobody else will have. There are similar kits you can buy obviously (although I don't think they scroll messages as well), but the one I design will be unique and nobody else in the world will have one exactly like it. Plus, the fact that my own time and effort will have gone into it oozes romance. She'll love it I'm sure!

Thanks for the advice so far all.

Bri

 

[Brian Hoskins]

Here's where you can buy some pink LEDs, in sizes from 1.8mm to 8mm.

I've seen ICs that play love me tender by Elvis when hooked up to 3V and a piezo transducer but I can't remember were.

Cheers Hero - long time no speak by the way! How are you doing?

I was thinking about the music side of things, and I actually bought a tiny 128MB MP3 player from Tesco for a few quid. It has one of those resistive headphone socket controllers so I've stripped it apart and hacked into it. I've loaded a suitable track onto the player, and now I've got my Micro to control it all in such a manner that the LEDs flash, the message is scrolled and some music is played in the background for good measure!

;-)

Bri

 

[microtexan]

Cheers Hero - long time no speak by the way! How are you doing?

I was thinking about the music side of things, and I actually bought a tiny 128MB MP3 player from Tesco for a few quid. It has one of those resistive headphone socket controllers so I've stripped it apart and hacked into it. I've loaded a suitable track onto the player, and now I've got my Micro to control it all in such a manner that the LEDs flash, the message is scrolled and some music is played in the background for good measure!

;-)

Bri

Brian, it does sound like you have nailed it. Good luck.

 

[Hero999]

I'm all right apart from my leg being a bit bruised after a car knocked me off my motorbike.

That sounds impressive, an MP3 is much better than crappy melody IC and a piezo and probably costs the same.

Are you going to have a small audio amplifier and speaker or will the MP3 drive 8R directly?

What about the scrolling message?

What are you going to use for the display? A dot matrix LED, a mobile phone LCD or does the MP3 have an LCD you can hack?

 

[House0Fwax]

I've seen ICs that play love me tender by Elvis when hooked up to 3V and a piezo transducer but I can't remember were.

That sounds like the UM66, Maplin used to sell them, I believe they are obsolete now, though I bought some and still have one here somewhere.

 

[monkeybiter]

Perhaps she might appreciate binary represented ascii codes scrolling 'I Love You' around the leds. Or perhaps 'I Like You' if it's early days.

 

[elmine]

what you wait

give her food and flower....

 

[Brian Hoskins]

I'm all right apart from my leg being a bit bruised after a car knocked me off my motorbike.

That's shocking! It's too cold to be riding a motorbike this time of year though surely?!

That sounds impressive, an MP3 is much better than crappy melody IC and a piezo and probably costs the same.

Indeed! My sentiments exactly!

Are you going to have a small audio amplifier and speaker or will the MP3 drive 8R directly?

Well analogue Electronics is not my forte, and whilst I'm quite capable of designing an audio amplifier (a crude one at least) I decided that I didn't have time so I bought a cheap amplifier module with an 8R output from Maplin. It's not very powerful, but it fits the bill quite nicely!

What about the scrolling message?

What are you going to use for the display? A dot matrix LED, a mobile phone LCD or does the MP3 have an LCD you can hack?

I wanted to use a dot matrix LED display, but I don't have any firmware to support those and insufficient time to write any. I already have some firmware that I wrote to support alpha-numeric displays so I've plumped for that.

The MP3 player is a very cheap and cheerful 128MB stick. It only cost me a few quid (literally) so nope it doesn't have an LCD on it. Perhaps next year I can give myself more time to be more elaborate with my display design :-D

Thanks for the advice everyone!

Bri

 

[Brian Hoskins]

Perhaps she might appreciate binary represented ascii codes scrolling 'I Love You' around the leds. Or perhaps 'I Like You' if it's early days.

Hmmm that's quite a neat idea. Would she work it out though...

She might do!

Bri

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

That's shocking! It's too cold to be riding a motorbike this time of year though surely?!

Not really, back when I was a biker it was my sole means of transport and I went to work and back on it in all weathers for about six years.

The cold wasn't the biggest problem, the biggest problem was car drivers - even though I had my headlight on all the time you could guarantee at least twice a week someone would pull out in front of you. Good for your reactions though!

 

[Hero999]

It's not that bad considering the other party's insurance is going to pay. Hopefully my bike will be fixed better than it was when I got it.

I don't have a car, even though I can both drive and easily afford one. I just don't see the point.