Circuit Design

Introduction

Robots contain electric circuits that connect the main computation unit with secondary controllers, sensors, and actuators. A part of designing a robot from scratch is to design its circuitry, both the electric characteristics and the physical layout inside the robot body.

Design Tools

Here is a selection of software tools for designing electrical circuits.

• KiCad
• Eagle is a very popular commercial product similar for schematics and PCB
• ngspice is an open-source, SPICE3-based circuit simulator
• Schematics.com is an online circuit schematic design tool
• CircuitLab is an online circuit schematics tool with SPICE simulation capabilities
• Volta
• MI-SUGAR

Components

• Voltage Regulators
• Digital Potentiometers

Recipes

• Powering A Module

Building Prototype Circuits

• Soldering
• Printed Circuit Board Milling