Learn PCB Design at WPI

Project-oriented hardware design course

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Why This Course Exists

WPI's curriculum, while project-focused, leaves a gap in practical hardware design skills. Many students graduate without the ability to design and build personal projects.

Goals

  • Augment WPI's curriculum with practical hardware design skills.
  • Instill careful, elegant, and thoughtful design methodology.
  • Give you the skills and inspiration to embark on your own projects.

Approach

Instead of teaching scientific or rigorous PCB design methods, we focus on teaching a hands-on, design-driven methodology. We hope students will take this knowledge and apply it to their own projects.

Content

As part of the course, students layout and route a PCB using a schematic we provide. The design contains a popular Arduino compatible microcontroller along with up to 30 RGB LEDs. Students are given this validated design, and are encouraged to add on their own custom peripherals with the help of our instructors and TAs.

Student Designed PCB

We've developed rich materials for students, including detailed lectures slides, lecture recordings, starter board and code files. After attending four lectures, students are given a starter board file and have two weeks to design their boards. We offer office hours for students to receive help. Afterwards, we manufacture student boards and students assemble their boards, completely for free.

Lecture Slides

Lecture 1: Introduction to PCB Design

PCB structure, design, and manufacturing
Lecture 2: Project Design

Researching and designing a personal project
Lecture 3: Layout + Routing

Design methodology for component layout and routing
Lecture 4: KiCad

How to use KiCad as a design tool and a basic exercise