Goku PCB Badge

What are the Best Kamehameha in the history of Dragon ball?

Well in this post, I'm giving you the 10 greatest Kamehameha in the history of the series.

Number 1, that time when Goku decided to be on a PCB and fire LED Chasing Sequence which is actually powered by a Coin Cell, not chi in this case.

The whole setup is powered by an Attiny84 and a few MOSFET ICs!

INTROIdea behind this badge and story

Hey everyone what's up!

All jokes aside, yes I made another PCB Badge which has a very interesting character on it. for those who don't know anything about Dragon ball, well it's an anime.

So this character GOKU, He's a Martial artist and he's also an alien from outer space, he and his group of friends protect the world from generic bad guys.

In this show, Goku and his friends use this power known as Chi, Kamehameha is the name of Chi blast that Goku uses to defeat his enemies.

A few days ago, I saw dragon ball after many years and this thought pops up in my mind, which was to convert Goku into a PCB and use Blue LEDs to emulated or imitate the CHI Blast!

So I made this Cool looking PCB in my OrCAD PCB designing suite and send it to PCBWay for samples.

In this video, I'm gonna show you guys how I made this PCB Badge in few easy steps, also if you're interested in purchasing this badge, then you can visit my tindie store. if not then it's okay.

https://www.tindie.com/products/pselectrobot/kamehameha-badge/

GETTING STARTED

The first step for making a PCB Project is to make a schematic that will have all the components that we need to run our project.

The CHI blast will be imitated by 5 LEDs Rows, each row will have 4 LEDs each which will be connected in parallel, with a total of 20 LEDs.

To drive these LED Rows individually, I added an 8205S Mosfet IC to each row.

So basically, To drive LEDs, I'm using a MOSFET as a Switch setup, then this MOSFET will be controlled by an Attiny84 MCU.

These are the materials required for this built!

• Attiny84
• Custom PCB
• 8205S Mosfet
• 0603 Blue LEDs
• Coin Cell Holder (SMD)
• 10K Resistance
• 1K Resistance
• USB Micro port
• Header pins

DESIGN

After Finalizing the Schematic, I then added components package details in the schematic and then converted this whole schematic into a PCB Board.

Before placing everything, I first imported this BMP image of GOKU into my PCB Design to keep this as a reference or guideline for placing the components.

Please note that the importing BMP image process will be different for your PCB Suits.

Anyways, after this I added components to their assigned places one by one, I added LEDs in rows and columns in the Kamehameha place.

it took only a couple of hours to finalize this PCB, in the end, this was the result.

After this, I exported its Gerber data and sent it to PCBWay for samples.

PCBWAYReview

After sending the PCBs for manufacturing, it only took 7 days to get delivered.

The PCBs that I had received were nice as expected!

this project required a custom silkscreen job which was not exactly easy to make but they did a great job in making these boards.

PCBWay you guys rock!

Check out PCBWay for getting great PCB service at less cost!

PCB ASSEMBLY

After getting the PCBs, I started the assembly process.

• we add solder paste to the pads of each component first.
• then we pick and place each component, one by one on their assigned location.
• After this, we carefully lift the PCB and place it on a reflow hotplate for SMT REFLOW.

(I'm using my DIY SMT HOTPLATE to reflow this PCB)

• Anyways, after that I removed few shorts which occur during the reflow process, these happen because of excess solder paste, how to avoid this? by using a Stencil instead of dispensing solder paste with a needle.
• After this, I added THT components and our PCB was basically ready.

But it still needs a critical thing to run, which would be,

• option A Code,
• option B, more code.

and then the right answer here is option A.

We have to upload code to it!

PROGRAMMING

I'm using an Attiny84 in this project, to program this microcontroller we can do two things here.

1st is to program it via USBASP and Atmel studio which is the hard way or use an Arduino as ISP Setup to flash this MCU.

I'm gonna use the Second option here which is the Arduino as ISP setup, for that I have already made a custom programmer that utilizes an Arduino Nano Board to flash a variety of stuff.

To do that, we first need the infamous Spence konde AttinyCore for Arduino IDE which you can download from here https://github.com/SpenceKonde/ATTinyCore

After Installing the core files, connect the following Arduino as ISP pins with PCB Badge in this order.

• VCC to VCC
• GND to GND
• D10 of Arduino Nano to RST Pin of Attiny84
• D11 of Arduino Nano to MOSI
• D12 of Arduino Nano to MISO
• D13 of Arduino Nano to SCK of Attiny84

After wiring, it’s time to flash the Microcontroller with its main sketch which is this-

int pinsCount=5;                        // declaring the integer variable pinsCount
int pins[] = {A0,A1,A2,A3,A4};          // Pin array of LEDs
void setup() {
pinMode(A0, OUTPUT);
pinMode(A1, OUTPUT);
pinMode(A2, OUTPUT);
pinMode(A3, OUTPUT);
pinMode(A4, OUTPUT);
}
void loop() {
for (int i=0; i<pinsCount; i=i+1){    // chasing right
digitalWrite(pins[i], HIGH);         // switching the LED at index i on
delay(70);                          // stopping the program for 100 milliseconds
digitalWrite(pins[i], LOW);          // switching the LED at index i off
}
for (int i=pinsCount-1; i>0; i=i-1){   // chasing left (except the outer leds)
digitalWrite(pins[i], HIGH);         // switching the LED at index i on
delay(70);                          // stopping the program for 100 milliseconds
digitalWrite(pins[i], LOW);          // switching the LED at index i off
}
}

The Flashing Process is relatively simple,

• open the tool menu, and select the attiny84 from boards. do not change any setting.
• select Arduino as ISP as programmer
• select the Right port and hit Burn Bootloader, wait for few seconds and you will be greeted with a done burning bootloader message.
• now go to the sketch menu and hit "upload using programmer"

And your board will Flash, and it will start its Kamehameha sequence.

RESULT

CONCLUSION

As you can see, with a little bit of creativity, we can convert anything into a PCB which was kinda like my goal here.

Making this project was fun and I would like to improve few things in this setup like adding a current limiting resistor to this board because these LEDs are drawing too much power, I powered it with USB Port with a 5V 2A charger and 4 LEDs straight up getting burned.

so it's recommended to add current limiting resistance in this setup or a better option would be to use a less current charger to drive this badge (5V 0.500A)

Anyways, Comment if you need any help!

Peace out