Various images from the process to design a pretty bird printed circuit board for manufacture. April, 2019
electrical engineering
Moth Circuit /
I continue to design circuits for the night-dwelling inhabitants of my latest electrolier. Here's a little white moth. It's two wings are separate boards comprising a single functional circuit that I'll join in the middle with wires. Its circuit is an adaptation of the well-known "Knight Rider" design: a 555 timer in astable mode that clocks a 4017 counter. I have selected resistor and capacitor values to blink the LEDs with a flutter effect, and there are several optional inputs to the moth whereby external circuits can add "noise," i.e., random behaviors that give a natural appearance. I will update you when the boards arrive and are wired up... fingers crossed that my design contains no errors, as drawing with copper traces is not the most straightforward way to visualize electrical connectivity. Below are two moth images pulled from the Internet for inspiration, followed by my circuit board design in KiCad software.
Two views of my moth in KiCad. The top image shows a 3d rendering of the actual boards, and the bottom shows my printed circuit board (PCB) layout. Kelly Heaton, 2018