Measure Muscle Sounds! Part 1: Electronic Board

Step 2 Get the board printed

The first thing you need to do is print the sensor's printed circuit board (PCB). You can either send the gerber and NC drill files (attached below) to a manufacturer or try doing it yourself at home by following another instructable such as (Mostly) easy PCB manufacture. Do not use the images below, they are not to scale and are only included as a reference, use the gerber files provided instead. Also, if you get the boards printed professionally, make sure you get a fair amount of them done (e.g. 50+) to reduce the cost since the board is very small and it may be way too expensive to make just one.

Once your boards are printed, they should look something like the third figure below.

• This instructable brought to you by The PRISM Lab and Komodo OpenLab

Comments

[endolith]

Do you really need a circuit board to attach three SMT components? Why not just solder them directly to the component leads? It would be cheaper and smaller. If the board is needed for some kind of mechanical structure or acoustic baffling or something, why not just a piece of standard prototyping board? That would be cheaper and easier than creating a custom board for such a simple circuit.

[Operon]

Well, I wanted to have a bit more control over the final size of the sensor (including thickness of the board), but you are right, the printed board is not essential and there may be better/easier ways to do it. If you come up with something better you can include it here... I have added you as a collaborator.

[endolith]

These "surfboards" (not a very useful term for search engines) are like perfboards but for surface mount components. I'm sure there are even more appropriate prototyping boards for surface mount components, but I can't find them right now.