In week 1, the circuit for the first PCB we designed this semester was built first on a solderless breadboard. The main focus of the first board was connectivity, i.e, ensuring that all the components work together when fabricated and assembled on a PCB. This lab was instrumental in understanding the working of the circuit and provided a confidence boost prior to designing the PCB. The circuit was a 555 timer IC designed for a specific duty cycle and frequency, driving 4 different LED's with different load resistors. This helped ascertain the relationship between the intensity of the light emitted by the LED and the value of resistance.

Week 2 was all about measurements! Lab2, 3 and 4 involved the best practices of an Oscilloscope and function generators, Measuring the Thevenin voltage and resistance of a function generator, and measuring inductive cross-talk. We also had a in-class peer review for our design for the first PCB we designed in this class using Altium Designer.

Week 3 was all about exploring the best design principles of designing a PCB. We built a simple slammer circuit for this purpose. The circuit draws a fast transient current from the power rail. When there is a current draw from the power rail, current flows through the inductance of the rail and the di/dt through this inductance causes a voltage drop which is a serious type of noise. Avoiding this in our designs was the primary goal of performing this lab and understanding the root causes of power rail collapse.

Week 4 was about exploring switching noise and inductive cross-talk, and ways to mitigate them. Lab 6 and 7 explored the best measurement practices to cross talk artifacts in scope probes. This provided an important insight into measurements and retaining the signal integrity of the DUT. Lab 8 explored a board with 2 sections labeled GOOD and BAD. The BAD layout section had a decoupling capacitor placed far away from the VCC of the IC used and did not have a continuous return path/plane for the ground. The GOOD section had a decoupling capacitor close to the VCC pin and had a polygon poured ground plane. The aim was to compare the switching noise on victim lines on both sides of the board.

In Week 5, we did a peer design review for the second board we designed for the class. Additionally, Lab 9 and 10 were about measuring trace resistances manually and the procedure to do that for different trace widths. It also involved testing the current tolerance of traces with different widths to notice at what current the trace would blow up. This week was an important lesson in Reverse Engineering and learning to consider these factors in our own designs.

In week 6, we received the first boards we had designed and had to bring them up to write out a report. We also explored using a TVS Diode, building a crystal oscillator circuit and through-hole soldering as preparation for Board 3.

In week 7, we explored the circuit required to boot load an ATMEGA328P chip. This was in anticipation of Board 3, a Golden Arduino. The board would work similar to a commercial Arduino UNO, however with much better noise performance, following all of the best layout guidelines.

In Week 8, we received our Board 2 PCBs which we had to bring-up to submit a report. Week 8 also involved an in-class CDR of our Board 3 - The Golden Arduino board.

In Week 9, we explored 3 different labs. The first lab focused on measuring in-rush currents to a board from the supply and also the steady state current. The second lab focused on soldering and assembly for SMT passive components and drag soldering for the ATEMGA328P. The third lab involved soldering a functional board and bringing up the board to verify its functioning.

In Week 10, we explored various circuits and principles as a preparation for our fourth and final board for the semester. The first was a lab to explore the difference between using differential and single-ended measurements for signals from the I2C bus of a sensor to ascertain the value of using differential measurements. The second was to explore I2C signals on a bus and see why pull-up resistors are used. The third was to measure the noise with return vias and without return vias in a provided 4-layer board and explore layer-to-layer crosstalk due to vias.

In Week 11, we explored the working of Smart LEDs in a cascaded format, a buzzer and the Solderless Breadboard version of our fourth and final PCB - An Instrument droid to measure the Thevenin Resistance of a source.