Build Instruction: Printed Circuit Boards

Circuit Boards!

The Mimic project makes use of three different custom circuit boards.

Why do we need custom circuit boards?

We don't! But they make things a lot easier. As long as the right wires get to the right places you can absolutely do this project without any of these printed circuit boards (PCBs). It will probably be a giant wire mess and be much more difficult to troubleshoot though, and getting neopixels in the right space on the truss will be tough.

The wire map page tells you exactly what microcontroller pins need to go where, but if you go the PCB route, you won't need to do that much.

The three custom PCBs we use are:

1. Integrated Equipment Assembly (IEA) PCBs (the IEAs are the boxes on the truss by the solar arrays):

2. HDMI Breakout Board

3. HDMI Shield