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Hellfire - 10/6/07 at 12:27 AM

Hi guys,
I'm looking to design our own Digital Gear Indicator. I want it to display using a 0.8" 7 segment LED display, I want to use a light dependent resistor to dull the display at night.

I want to know if there is any good software out there to help me with PCB design and calculation of values of components.

TIA - Steve

Hellfire - 10/6/07 at 12:39 AM

Is Eplan 5.4 any good?

Steve

[Edited on 10-6-07 by Hellfire]

the_fbi - 10/6/07 at 09:22 AM

For the PCB Design http://www.pad2pad.com/ is free and pretty good.

Catpuss - 10/6/07 at 01:07 PM

Dunno about eplan, but with a 270 day trial its worth a go.

Bob C - 10/6/07 at 07:43 PM

Couple of points:-
1) why LDR - you have sidelights, dipped and main beams to feedback the bright/dim ness.
2) I've tried a few free & cheap CAD systems and they are all useless apart from EAGLE - which is excellent!
3) as a result of '2' I have a comlete licenced copy of (I think) EDS II bought from farnell for a project. It is so sh1te it's practically unuseable. If anyone wants it they can have it for nowt (cost me £300)
- ahh if I can find it - it's not in sight, I might have slung it - if anyone's interested I'll look a bit harder
Bob

MikeRJ - 11/6/07 at 07:48 AM

I'll second Eagle, it's a very capable package, though I did find it had a bit of a steep learning curve compared to the PADs system I used at work.

Free PCB might be worth a look, the author seems to be supporting this very well. The main downside is it has no schematic capture built in, but you can import netlists in the widely used PADS-PCB format format so the open source schematic capture tool TinyCad can be used.

If you want to do any simulation I can thoroughly recommend SwitcherCad from Linear Technology, it's an excellent (and free) Spice simulator and schematic capture tool.

[Edited on 11/6/07 by MikeRJ]

iank - 11/6/07 at 08:59 AM

I also use eagle (on Linux). You can send the files directly to some PCB manufacturers without any conversion hassle (I use http://www.pcb-pool.com/)

The free version doesn't autoroute but I find doing that chore strangely therapeutic (it has a limited size which isn't a limitation for a gearchange indicator and is limited to 2 layers which also won't be a problem)

[Edited on 11/6/07 by iank]

Hellfire - 14/6/07 at 09:53 AM

Many thanks - I'm trying eplan for now...

Thread closed.