Our Mission
Welcome
We are glad you are here, and we are really excited that you want to learn the fundamentals of printed circuit board (PCB) design. Here are some quick things about what you are in for:
This class is project-focused, and you will be designing and fabricating a PCB from scratch in this class, which will include schematic capture, board layout, assembly, and debugging to get it working. For this IAP course we will pay to have your PCBs fabricated and purchase the components for them - there will be no cost to you.
We will help you learn the ins and outs of the PCB design cycle by teaching you each step of the process in lecture, letting you try your hand at it, and then following up on your work with a design review (DR). DRs are short 15-20 minute sessions where we sit with you to go over your designs and provide feedback before moving onto the next step. You will have three of these - one after you finish your schematic, one after you finish your board layout, and one after you assemble and debug your board.
One importat thing to note is that this year we are looking to better define what prerequisites the class should have. While students are not required to have a certain degree of previous electrical design experience, we are re-shaping the curriculum and we will be hosting a single streamlined course for all our students. There may be hiccups - we understand that our some of our new lectures and labs may work well for some students but not for others - which is why we encourage you tell us if you feel something needs to be improved or changed as you take the class. We want to improve the course, and part of that involves getting feedback from the students who are experiencing it.
How Do I Get Help?
If you are ever feeling stuck, we have a few ways for you to reach out and find help! The course staff are listed below alongside their kerbs and feel free to email anyone of us individually, or all at once at yaypcbs[at]mit[dot]edu. For specific technical questions, we have listed out our skills so you may reach out to one of us if desired.
- Lecturer - Winnie Szeto - wszeto
- Knowledgable in KiCAD
- Familiar with Altium
- Power electronics
- LED lighting
- ESP32 systems
- Passives selection
- Medium-frequency IC selection (Up to 1 MHz)
- Designing for Durability, Reliability, Mass Production
- USB-C
- Familiar: High speed digital systems
- Familiar: 120V Power systems
- Lecturer - Will Vu - willvu
- Knowledgeable in Altium
- Familiar with KiCAD
- RF/Microwave systems (anything wireless)
- Embedded devices
- Lab Assistant - Mia Ladolcetta - mial
- Familiar with KiCAD
- Familiar with Altium
- ESP32 & STM32 systems
- I2C/SPI
- Packaging for product design
- Design for noise reduction
- Designing for Durability, Reliability, Mass Production
- Lab Assistant - Jesse George-Akpenyi - jgeorgea
- Knowledgeable in Altium, weaker in KiCAD
- Controls
- Very familiar with microcontrollers and FPGAs
- Analog circuit design
- Embedded devices
- Communication protocols (I2C/SPI/CAN…)
- Lab Assistant - Deepta Gupta - deeptag
- Familiar with KiCAD
- Familiar with Altium
- Analog circuit design
- Embedded systems
- IC Selection
- Board population and debugging
- Lab Assistant - Sarah Pomerantz - svpom
- Knowledgeable in Altium
- Power electronics
- HV and LV integration
- Signal integrity
- Lab Assistant - Marissa Liu - mhliu
- Knowledgeable in Altium
- ESP32
- Programming with Arduino IDE
We also have an official class Slack workspace! Please email us if you are enrolled in the course and have not yet received a Slack invite. All correspondence throughout the course will occur through the Slack workspace and we will be online as much as possible to provide support to all of you.
Lastly, all the course materials listed on this website are intended to be freely referenceable and, therefore, are fully open and released under a CC license. If there is something you feel is missing, please let us know!
Software
We will primarily be focusing on using Altium Designer throughout our labs and lectures. It is widely used in industry and it has a free educational license. However, we will also support students who would like to run KiCAD (a free and open source PCB EDA software) instead as Altium may not be able to run smoothly on all computers. Nonetheless, the course materials will not be terribly specific to either Altium or KiCAD and when you finish this course you should be able to switch between both platforms pretty easily as all the fundamentals are the same.
Please remember that our goal is to teach you both design and debugging. These are essential skills for being a good engineer, so we will focus on concepts, processes, methods for identifying and solving problems, and asking good questions. The core of design is in the details you choose to pay attention to; the software you use is merely a tool to express it digitally.
Where do I go?
Lectures are MWF from 10-11AM beginning January 8th and ending February 2nd. Lectures for weeks 1, 3, and 4 will take place in room 4-159, and for week 2 they will take place in room 4-145. These will be recorded and available on the course website within a day or so after the lecture.
We will also use the Electronics Mezzanine in 6C-006A (right next to Metropolis) for PCB assembly (soldering), office hours, and design reviews. We can also put together additional virtual DRs/office hours too in extenuating circumstances upon request - or if we get tired of being in lab :)
Please check the course schedule for the most up-to-date office hours schedule!
Grading
Truthfully we are not going to be particuarly concerned about grading - we are not going to require a working board at the end of IAP, and all we ask is that you put in consistent effort and try to learn! We want to get you excited about something we care a lot about, and if you put in the work you will be in good shape. Show up to our classes and labs, complete the milestones, and you will pass. If you need to miss a lab or lecture, email us at yaypcbs@mit.edu and we will figure out a solution.
That said getting a good design will take a fair bit of time, so this class counts for 6 units of academic credit.
Required Safety Training
We will be working with low-voltage electronics in this class, and doing some soldering at high temperatures. You will need to complete the Electrical Safety Awareness training that’s available in the Learning Center on atlas.mit.edu.
Special Thank-You’s
Huge thanks goes out to the following departments, individuals, and special friends who made this course possible:
- Adi and Fischer for their dedication to make this class a reality. You were the ones who first started the course to feel this need at MIT. You’ve helped our shape my career paths, as well as for hundreds more.
- Our AMAZING lab staff comprising of Jesse, Mia, Deepta, Marissa, and Sarah. We could NOT have done it without you all!
- Professor J. Kim Vandiver, Amy Fitzgerald, Sandra J. Lipnoski, Lee Zamir, Dr. Jim Bales, + the MIT Edgerton Center for providing funding, support, a space, and helping make this a reality.
- Steve Banzaert, for your support from the moment we met. You’ve offered me (Winnie) so many opportunities to learn so much of what I know in electronics. Your mentorship has provided the support that I needed to start a career in Electrical Engineering. You’ve helped us countless times when we ran into roadblocks and you’ve been extremely helpful in navigating the logistics of running this course.
- John Leonard, David Trumper, Emma Dunn, Liam Brenner, + the MIT Department of Mechanical Engineering for believing in our vision, providing us funding, and understanding the importance of hands-on learning. Your relentless support of your students is an inspiration to us every day.
- Professor Joel Voldman and Joe Steinmeyer + the MIT Electrical Engineering and Computer Science department for your support last year in making this class possible and this year for your continuing support of the class and its goals.