LED Alphabet - Glow Glyphs

• LED Alphabet - Glow Glyphs
  Posted by leonelabs on 23 Mar, 2016 17:45
• Hi everyone,
  I want to show off my latest project, its an LED alphabet I made from PCBs. They're covered in white LEDs and they can chained together with a little push-on connector, I call them Glow Glyphs.
  
  I had started using KiCAD for the layout but quickly realized it would take me forever to get all the LED placements correct by hand so I ended up writing my own little piece of software to help me. I even ended up writing a panelization helper so I could fit more of the letters into the PCB vendors prototyping footprint (100mm x 100mm). I think the incumbent EDA tools suffer from an over-generalization problem, while you can conceivably design any type of circuit with them they seem to be poor companions for this type of specialized design: simple circuits, varied layouts, non-Manhattan geometry, panelization challenges (irregular outlines).
  
  I hope you enjoy, and any feedback is appreciated. If you want to follow along with future updates, go here:
  

  • www.facebook.com/glowglyphs/
  • www.glowglyphs.com
  • www.crowdsupply.com/leonelabs/glow-glyphs

  
  Cheers,
  LeoneLabs
  
  The heart has the coin cell battery on the backside and it shares its power with the 'I' and the 'U' when their chained together
  

  

  
  With an external DC power supply its possible to make really long chains
  

  

  
  Here's a deconstructed "power glyph" with the SMD parts I used
  

  

  
  I forgot the '!' but you should read it in your head with the emphasis 
  

  

  
  Here's an example of the PCBs in the 100mm x 100mm panel. I used my own software to help me position the letters and add the tabs.
  

  

  
  Here's the promo video
  

  https://youtu.be/QcJrJnxa7Wc
• #1 Reply
  Posted by elgonzo on 23 Mar, 2016 18:00
• Nice project. 
  
  However, i disagree with what you called the "over-generalization problem". Imagine projects like KiCAD would focus their development effort on very specialized features that would be mostly only of value for those who make novelty PCBs (who, compared to the overall population of "PCB designers" are a minority). Concentrating your efforts on features that only benefit a minority would take the energy out of the project, would ensure that the user base would remain small and pose a palpable risk of leading the project into hibernation or death. Of course it would be nice for projects like yours if KiCAD or similar suites would offer the specialized features you crave. Such very specialized features would be best provided by some kind of extension or scripting mechanism. Agreed, packages like KiCAD are not yet in a state where they provide such mechanisms, but calling it "EDA tools suffer from an over-generalization problem" is quite a stretch...
• #2 Reply
  Posted by leonelabs on 24 Mar, 2016 15:51
• Thanks.
  
  I don't think KiCAD should change, it needs to be what it is, but I think there's room for specialization in the EDA tool ecosystem. I see the modular prototyping hardware from places like Seeed Studio and Adafruit and I wonder why can't there be an EDA tool for combining those pieces with routed traces rather than jumper wires?
• #3 Reply
  Posted by zapta on 24 Mar, 2016 15:55
• I like it.
  
  What does your software do? Generate gerber? Output data files that you import into Kicad to do the rest?
• #4 Reply
  Posted by leonelabs on 25 Mar, 2016 06:19
• The software helps with different aspects:
  

  • There's a UI for assigning SVGs to different layers and positioning the LEDs along the SVG paths
  • There's a UI for panelization so I can I can drag-n-drop the individual PCBs into a panel and have them fit together. It's similar to this , mine is less polished but it has the same 2D physics of rigid body collisions. I can also add break-away tabs/mousebites.
  • Then it exports data to a KiCad format, mainly because I like KiCADs copper fill algorithm. But this also means I need to get the nets right so I more-or-less generate a nelist based on the footprints and components being used
  • There's also a bunch of file IO for saving and loading data.

  
  Here's what it looks like:
  
  
  I haven't seen any good options for PCB panelization of irregular shapes, I think the PacCAM work looks excellent, wouldn't it be great to have something like that incorporated into KiCAD? All I see now is the "append board" feature which comes up short in my opinion.
  
  I would like to keep adding features, like being able to import KiCAD boards (not just export) so I could do a traditional EDA flow (for the more complex circuit designs) but be able to panelize them with the irregular shaped PCBs. PCB material is just too valuable to be wasting 20-50% on irregular shapes that can't be packed together.