PCB designed for our final capstone project, which was used to charge our LiPo battery for our system as well as a charge level indicator for the same battery. The LM3914 IC was the main component used to display the charge level of our battery over 10 levels between 3.2V to 4.2V. The range was specified using a combination of voltage dividers and a boost converter to boost the same LiPo battery's volt to 5.7V as, the IC chips max measurable range was 1.5V below the max supplied voltage. The zener diode between the power supply and the battery was simply there to prevent the backflow of charge back into the wireless chargers' receiver, that were using to charge the battery.

Why Golden? Because, this board was designed to have reduced noise levels in the signal traces along with a reduced near field emissions under the board relative to the commercially available Arduino UNO board. Along with this, the inclusion of various test points across the board, LEDs to indicate power and signal traces, and extra ground headers along the pins, for a shorter return path, leads to an improved version of the commercial UNO board. 

Polishing off the class was a HAT (Hardware Attached on Top) for the Golden Arduino that would measure the current, Thevenin Voltage and Thevenin resistance of the voltage source connected to this board. While I had to make an adjustment on the schematic, after the board was built and components were soldered on top to get it to work, and even then while the board itself took the measurements like it was supposed to, the data taken was not what I expected. The button below will take you to a more detailed report for this board.

This board was designed to show the good and bad practices used in PCB design and give us experience in building a relatively complex board and debugging it. And being one of the first, more complex boards, I had to fix some of the connecting traces which gave me much more appreciation for getting the connections/traces right the first time. The button below will take you to a more detailed report for this board.