Skillset & Portfolio > Schematic, Simulation & PCB
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Circuit Simulation
Circuit simulation can be a huge time & cost saver, helping you spot design flaws before the circuit is even drafted in CAD. “Will a 3-pole filter be enough? And exactly what filter component values will I need?” “What about across the temperature range or component tolerances? “Does my reverse-connected power-supply protection actually work?”. Answering these questions sooner rather than later saves time and money.
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Schematic = Understanding
A schematic diagram that’s neat and consistent is the beginning of understanding, of where an idea starts to become something real, and where others who get involved further along start from: PCB routing, manufacturing, servicing. A little empathy at the start goes a long way!
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Hierarchy gives perspective
Hierachical design is usually essential for anything more complicated than one or two sheets, and shows the overall structure of the system, which can help others later on.
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Net-Labelling
Assigning NetLabels to nodes can help at both the schematic-understanding stage, and at the PCB layout stage to help the human router identify signals, and groups of signals, and route them appropriately.
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Interfacing & Robustness, EMC & ESD
“Who are you interfacing with today?” Will it be in a dry climate, or on synthetic carpet, both of which promote ESD static zaps? Product designers rarely know. There’s no room for “But it fails 1 test in 100 and I don’t know why!” if you’re intending to make thousands of something, or if the consequences of failure are serious. The difference between a prototype and a product is experience, planning, and worst-case engineering. For a robust, reliable, and EMC-compliant product, interfaces like Ethernet, USB, RS485, etc must be well protected and filtered.
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Sensing the real world
Embedded Systems are at the forefront of interfacing to the real world. Conditioning inputs can help the firmware (and the people designing it) get on with achieving the application instead of making up for cheap hardware. Likewise, good analog and ADC design is often a critical part of interfacing to the real world, after all, the world is analog :)
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Low Power & Doing More With Less
Power consumption is a critical factor in many systems, and having control over the power supplied to sub-systems or remote modules is a key technique; as is avoiding Thevenin sources where ever possible, dynamic control over clock speeds, and even capacitor leakage current for ultra-low-power products. Conversely, whilst I2C will never set the low-power world on fire, it’s still a ubiquitous nuts-n-bolts inter-chip interface, which some “engineers” still get so wrong (*cough* I’m looking at you, high-profile SV-based drone company no longer making drones *cough*). The world of electronics is a dense and overlapping landscape of possibilities and solutions.
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NetLabels & moderation
I despise circuit designs that connect pins via a netlabel instead of a wire-line (“Does this signal go anywhere else? Why are you making me search the entire sheet/project to make sure!?”). But for larger MCUs & FPGAs where pin-swapping may happen, netlabel connectivity can be helpful.
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PCB Design
PCB routing is a bizarre alternating combination of Zen-like concentration and trance-like repetition. It’s one of the few things I can do while also listening to music. I love doing it, but it’s sometimes a better use of my time to let a full-time PCB designer do some routing jobs, a question that comes down to time, budgets and deadlines.