I try to learn not only programming but as well electronics. Lately I made my first PCB board, it is simply but as first one it is good enough for me 🙂 and I am very happy that I finally made it. I think that next one certainly will better.

Like I wrote, the board isn’t complicated. It has three main modules:

• power supply, it is very simple power supply

It consist of one positive voltage regulator LM7805, four supply voltage filtering capacitors, one power jack, one LED and one resistor for LED.

• microcontroller with crystal

Microcontroller part include one ATMEGA 328P ( the same as it is in ARDUINO UNO ), filtering capacitors, one inductor, one crystal, three lines with female headers and one LED with one resistor for programs simple debugging.

• in system programming socket

Last module include one 10 pins KANDA socket for isp programming, one resistor as a RESET pin to supply pull-up and one momentary button as reset.

The board itself is made on prototyping board. I thought that making it this way will be easy for a beginner like me. And it probably would be so if I knew some things that I learned hard way :). Namely: too much flux is veeeery bad for soldering, flux should be only on soldered parts. Unfortunately for me I added too much flux and then it spread across the board. Soldering after such thing is very complicated and annoying because filler is not laying as it should. I learned as well that I have to buy better soldering iron with precise temperature setting :), and I have to but thinner soldering iron tip as well.

Fortunately the boards works without any problems, but it looks terrible.