Please note that this page is currently a work-in-progress, and content is constantly be added and updated, so some portions may not yet be present.

We will cover the process of designing and building an electronics project. If you're new to electronics projects and microcontrollers, I hope you'll learn a lot here. If you've been doing this a few years, I welcome your comments and suggestions for improvement.

The topics we will be discussing include:

1. Fleshing Out a Basic Project Idea
2. Determining what parts to use in the project
3. Designing a circuit using datasheets
4. Converting paper schematic to schematic in KiCad
5. Designing component symbols in KiCad as needed
6. Laying out Printed Circuit Board (PCB) design in KiCad
7. Designing component pads as needed using datasheets or measurements
8. Routing the Circuit in KiCad
9. Preparing the design for manufacture
10. Soldering parts and troubleshooting as you go
11. Developing program code for AVR
12. Programming chip using AVR Studio, troubleshooting as you add complexity

If you're big on productivity, or at least like reading about productivity, you've likely heard of the Action Method by now. It's explained in detail in the book "Making Ideas Happen", by Scott Belsky. Scott, and his company Behance, spent several years studying the how productive, creative people are able to not only innovate, but execute their ideas effectively and regularly. I really enjoyed reading about their "Action method", and have started to apply it to my life.

I also love Levenger's Circa Notebooks, and when I heard that Behance and Levenger had collaborated to create Action Method page inserts for the Circa system, I was thrilled.

But... there were two things frustrating me.

1. I have to wait nearly 2 weeks for the new paper inserts to arrive, due to shipping over a holiday.
2. Behance has, for whatever reason, limited the color selection of their Action Method products to blue, orange, and gray (all Pantone color choices). I haven't been able to find any solid reasoning for this. It seems an arbitrary design choice.

I LOVE color, and I hate waiting, so based on the free page template Behance has made available on various websites, I used Inkscape to generated papers with a selection of 6 different colors. Attached are two zip files. One contains a PDF of each color, along with a PDF of the dot-grid for the back of the pages. The other contains the PDFs and the Inkscape SVG file with each color, and an SVG and PDF of a simple dot-grid for the back of the sheets.

With the SVG files and Inkscape, you can easily edit the papers or change the colors to your own needs.

I'm giving it all away free, just as Behance gave the original blue PDF away free. I doubt this will be very useful for most people for a number of reasons (more expensive to print than to simply buy, not quite as professional-looking, etc), but if you're in a hurry to get started with the Action Method, or if you're not satisfied with being limited to blue, orange, and gray, perhaps you'll find these useful.


Please be sure to let me know in the comments below if you found these useful, if you'd like more colors, or if any other changes would be helpful.

(Note: I am not associated with or employed by Behance, but I love their work!)