Drawing Circuits in Fritzing

Overview

  1. Install Software (Fritzing)

  2. Draw Some Circuits

Submission

You should export PNGs of your Fritzing drawings and submit them below.


Fritzing

Download and install Fritzing. This is a free, open source application.

Draw Your First Circuit

There’s a tutorial (as well as links to tutorial videos) on the Fritzing website:

http://fritzing.org/building-circuit/

Using this tutorial (or, by just experimenting), see if you can draw out the circuit that we built in class the first day. The components you’ll need will include:

  • An LED
  • Wires
  • A resistor (1K)
  • A 9V battery

In this case, use the 9V battery instead of a power supply. Or, go looking around in Fritzing… does it have a power supply anywhere?

When you draw your circuit, see if you can do it neatly. Can you add additional bendpoints to the lines so that you have nice, neat 90˚ turns everywhere? Can you make it so the lines are nicely curved and swoopy? Can you make sure you don’t cross things over more than necessary?

HINT: This page from the Bald Engineer has two great resources. I’ll discuss each of those resources below, but you may want to read more on his webpage.

Messy Fritzing Diagrams

The Bald Engineer talks about making nice Fritzing diagrams. He has this great picture

On the left is a messy Fritzing diagram. On the right is the same circuit, made neat. MAKE NEAT DIAGRAMS. And, read his page (section #6) to learn more.

Draw Your First Schematic

Across the top of Fritzing are several tabs (or buttons). One says “Breadboard.” Another says “Schematic.” Flip to the schematic view.

This is the same circuit you’ve just drawn on the breadboard. Organize the schematic so that:

  1. It is neat; as few wires should cross as possible. (Ideally, none.)
  2. It is reasonably compact; it should not be huge, nor should it be cramped.
  3. It is labeled; edit component labels so that they make sense to you, and would also be clear to your peers.

You shouldn’t have to add or delete wires in this view; if you built the breadboard correctly, then this view will already be connected with “rats nest” wires, and you’ll be ready to simply shift stuff around and clean it up.

Note: you can double-click a rats nest wire to make it a real wire.

Multi-LEDs

Finally, go back to the multimeter lab. Can you recreate a circuit that has:

  1. Two resistors (in parallel) and two LEDs (in series)?

  2. Two resistors (in series) and two LEDs (in series)?

These are roughly similar to diagrams that were in the lab. Again, you are aspiring to keep them need.

For each, you will be exporting both the breadboard diagram and the schematic—so tidy up the schematic as well!

Learning Outcomes

  • Craft, Fab, & Safety 1.2: Use Fritzing for breadboard diagrams of basic circuits.
  • Craft, Fab, & Safety 1.3: Identify basic components in schematic form.

Submission

I’ll have this set up shortly. MCJ 20150108