Introduction to Fritzing

Doreen Clemons: Introduction to Fritzing
While circuit design with a breadboard and jumper wires is fine for the lone hobbyist, sometimes you have to share your work. Even a photograph of your spaghetti-wiring often doesn't give the full picture. When you're collaborating or need some help debugging, a clear diagram is worth a thousand emails...or StackExchange comments.

Fritzing is an open-source CAD (computer-aided drafting) tool created specifically for circuit design. In this talk, Doreen will demonstrate the basics of locating parts, laying out a circuit, and (as usual) cover some of the "gotchas" in the software.

Doreen Clemons is the proverbial chief cook and bottle-washer at Bonaventure Software. She started programming in BASIC on a TRS-80 at the age of 12 and has since earned her living with Visual Basic, "Classic" ASP, ActionScript, HTML, JavaScript, Java, T-SQL, PHP, and MySQL. In her free time, Doreen lives out her Evil Mad Inventor fantasies by tinkering with Arduino and the Raspberry Pi. During episodes of "coder's block," you can find her on Twitter at @bonaventuresoft.

Transcript

1. Introduction to Fritzing Moncton Developer User Group 20 September 2016 Doreen A. Clemons
2. Overview: What's Being Covered 1. Overview 2. “The Real Estate Tour” 3. Finding Components 4. Demo: Controlling 8 LEDs with 3 Wires (Pins)
3. So who am I, right?  Chief cook and bottle-washer at Bonaventure Software  Hobbyist work with Arduino, Raspberry Pi  Don't like wasting (i.e., frying) components  Also, sometimes need to show circuit to others (e.g. StackOverflow)
4. Fritzing Overview Photo Source: http://www.soa-world.de/echelon/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/3599257794_52f5cc0b09_o.jpg Core of a Cray I Supercomputer
5. Overview  Free-as-in-beer: Windows, Mac, Linux*  By “Linux,” they mean Ubuntu  Text in dialog boxes sometimes wonky on 14.04 + Gnome Classic  Arduino/PICAXE integration may require later Linux versions  “Free” alternatives  Adobe: Requires account  EAGLE: Free version has limitations on size & licensing  Slow development: 2007-2016 & still in Beta
6. Overview: Fritzing Pros and Cons  Pros  Allows you to think wiring through before mangling parts/wires  Breadboard/PCB view highlighting connection paths is a nice sanity-check  Intuitive interface  Intermediate / Advanced features usually easy to find  Cons  “Gotcha”: Documentation can be out of date.  Breadboard -> Schematic or Breadboard -> PCB is UGLY: Be prepared to do each view from scratch  Parts can be difficult to find; “rolling your own” is not fun  (Breadboard) Layout sometimes looks weird vs. “real world”
7. Fritzing: The Real Estate Tour Photo Source: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-MYtNcESuAFo/UJmtP5iu12I/AAAAAAAAFR4/ogNbPyVVdg0/s1600/Real+Estate+1.jpeg
8. Real Estate Tour: “Installing” Fritzing 1. Download .ZIP file from http://fritzing.org/download/ 2. Unzip file to convenient location on hard drive 3. (Recommended) Create OS-specific launcher for executable 4. (Optionally) Associate the (.FZZ) file type with the Fritzing executable
9. Real Estate Tour: UI Overview “Breadboard” View Tab Breadboard Working Area (where the magic happens) Parts to drag and drop onto board Details of selected part Controls for position / orientation of part Zoom level control
10. Real Estate Tour: Show Part Inspector
11. Finding the Right Parts Photo Source: http://66.media.tumblr.com/cbfaef685eef53b3e8feaf674ddc72de/tumblr_n780sh8ndU1qz5q5lo1_1280.jpg
12. Parts Bin(s): Organisation “Generic” parts Custom and/or imported parts Scroll up or down for other parts categories Search feature Vendor-specific parts
13. Parts Bins: The “Gotchas”  Vendor-oriented bins are absolutely no help in either Icon View or List View  Some vendors (e.g. Adafruit, Seeed Studio) haven't contributed parts or only a (small) fraction of their catalogue  Be prepared to roll with “close enough” as long as the pinout is the same  Be prepared to search multiple terms – ranging from very specific to very vague  Creating your own (SVG) parts is an advanced move
14. Demo: 8 LEDs With 3 Wires
15. Demo: Circuit in Real Life
16. Demo: Basic Steps 1. Choose appropriate breadboard 2. Locate (and optionally customise) parts 3. Arrange parts on breadboard 4. (Optionally) Label parts 5. Add necessary extra wiring 6. (Optionally) Export to .PNG, .JPEG, .SVG, or .PDF format
17. Demo: Circuit in Fritzing Breadboard View
18. Experimenting on Your Own Photo Source: http://images4.fanpop.com/image/quiz/571000/571868_1302369936696_315_395.jpg
19. Fritzing: Resources  Fritzing website: http://www.fritzing.org/  New to electronics?  https://www.sparkfun.com/tutorials  https://learn.adafruit.com  http://www.instructables.com/id/Basic­ Electronics  Camenzind, Hans, Much Ado About Almost Nothing: Man's Encounter with the Electron: www.indiebound.org/book/9780615139951  Shameless plug for the MPL Makerspace/FabLab: http://monctonpubliclibrary.ca/makerspace/
20. Et cetera  URL of slides (as .PDF file): http://www.bonaventuresoftware.ca/mug/Frit zing/slides.pdf  Email: doreen@bonaventuresoftware.ca  Twitter: @bonaventuresoft