[HCRA] KB6NU's Column for March 2012

[Larry - WB1DBY]

For everyones reading enjoyment.


73,

Larry, WB1DBY
wb1dby at comcast.net

Visit my local ham club at: www.hcra.org
We meet the first Friday of every month. I'll see you there!



> Hi, folks--
>
> Here's my March column.
>
> NOTE: You can find the image, i.e. Figure 1, to go along with this article 
> at 
> http://www.kb6nu.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/circuitlab-example-255x300.png.
>
> NOTE #2: I'm going international!  Please welcome Oskar Sverrisson, TF3DC, 
> of the Icelandic Radio Amateurs (www.ira.is) to the list.
>
> NOTE #3: This column is going out to 291 newsletter editors. I'd love to 
> top 300 subscribers. If you know of a club newsletter editor who is not on 
> the list, please invite them to join.
>
> Dan
>
>
> Free Circuit Design Tools for Ham Radio
>
> By Dan Romanchik, KB6NU
>
> About a week ago, I started looking for a schematic capture program so 
> that I could easily generate some simple schematics for my upcoming Extra 
> Class study guide. Since I use a Mac as my main computer, I first asked on 
> the Ham-Mac mailing list if anyone knew of a good one. I got several 
> recommendations, including:
>
>  - Diptrace (http://www.diptrace.com/),
>  - Eagle (http://www.cadsoftusa.com/downloads/freeware/?language=en), and
>  - McCad (http://mccad.com/)
>
> Eagle looked like a good choice, although several people mentioned that 
> the user interface “left much to be desired.”
>
> Then, I remembered that I had OmniGraffle, which is a general-purpose 
> diagramming tool. Googling around, I found several sets of electronic 
> symbol libraries that could be used with OmniGraffle. I installed them, 
> and generated a couple of figures for the study guide section that 
> discusses T-network and pi-network filters. It was a reasonably good 
> solution to my problem.
>
> A Web solution
> A couple of days ago, though, someone on the local Maker mailing list, 
> pointed me towards CircuitLab (https://www.circuitlab.com/), an online 
> schematic capture tool and circuit simulator. I haven’t tried the circuit 
> simulation yet, but the schematic capture tool is really easy to use. It's 
> much easier to use for drawing circuit diagrams than OmniGraffle.
>
> Another benefit is that it doesn't matter what computer you're using. 
> Because it runs in a Web browser, it doesn't matter whether that browser 
> is running on a Mac or a PC or even a Linux box.
>
> If you set up an account, you can save circuits to your "workbench." To 
> get you started, there are some sample circuits, such as the 555 timer 
> circuit shown in Figure 1. There’s also some decent documentation and a 
> forum where you can discuss circuits and get some help.
>
> Finally, the price is right, too. It looks like using CircuitLab is 
> completely free. I couldn’t find any pages that required payment.
>
> ==============================================================
>
> When not searching the Web for circuit design tools, you'll find KB6NU 
> working 30m CW and twittering away about his contacts. His Twitter id is 
> @kb6nu. He would love for you to follow him there. If you don't tweet, you 
> can still read his blog at www.kb6nu.com.