process. It is comforting to have the ability to practice
some of these steps before you get down to work on your
“live” circuit. Hopefully, you can work a few kinks out of
the process before you get to those special parts you only
have a few of.
The package also included a sample circuit called a
“Beta Layout – create electronics kit” (Figure 5). This
circuit includes the following: PCB, battery lead, SMD
parts, 3D printed model of assembled PCB, laser cut SMD
solder stencil, battery holder (also 3D printed), aluminum
front panel (with printed graphics, machined holes, and
mounting posts), and mounting hardware.
The “create electronics kit” really shows off the
capabilities of Beta Layout, allowing one to build a
professional kit with the included parts and front panel
(Figure 6). This particular kit is for a digital dice roller
circuit, but I could easily imagine it being a circuit/module
of my own design! How would you like to have a
professionally produced front panel for your latest project?
Once everything in the package was unpacked, I
started to wonder “can it be this easy?” It looked like it
would be a simple “plug and go” operation, but I decided
I better scan the instructions just in case. Hmm, what is
this learn cycle?!
The learn cycle ends up being a fairly simple process.
It turns out that the time required to bring the oven up to
temperature varies across many different ovens. In order
to adapt the controller to the oven’s heat-up time, you
simply plug the provided thermal sensor into the
controller, place the thermal sensor (attached to a PCB)
into the oven (Figure 7), and start the controller with the
“start” button. The rest is automatic. Check out Figure 8
for these “learn” steps. The controller will turn the oven
on, causing it to heat up. The controller then turns the
oven off and measures the thermal over-shoot (how fast
and how far the temperature climbs) so that it can more
accurately control the desired temperature. With the learn
cycle complete, it was time to solder.
The controller does a great job of temperature and
time control, and is much more accurate than my previous
method of using a stop-watch and thermometer. This is
primarily because it takes the human out of the loop for
time and temperature regulation (Figure 9). The controller
48 January 2015
Figure 5. The Create: Electronics dice roll kit.
Figure 6. Assembled dice roll kit with custom made front panel.
Figure 7. Thermal sensor attached to PCB in the oven.