Chris's Special-Effects Boards

Overview

These are a series of hobby-project boards intended to produce sounds and blinking lights. The boards are Arduino-compatible and small enough to be packaged inside homemade toys.

Except where indicated otherwise, the files in this project are copyright (c) 2025 by Christopher Thomas and are released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

FIXME - This really needs a user manual.

FIXME - Firmware code not yet folded into the repository.

KiCad Configuration

In Preferences->Configure Paths, set KICAD_EXT_VENDOR to point to the vendor-kicad folder.

Folders

• pcb-202009-9v -- Compact board that sits on top of a 9v battery. Needs an external clock to be programmed. Made with the "pcb" program (now part of gEDA) rather than with KiCad.
• pcb-202502 -- Feature-rich board with terminal block connections. Bulky and very expensive. Made with KiCad.
• vendor-datasheets -- Datasheets. Under vendor copyright.
• vendor-kicad -- Vendor-supplied KiCad files, with additions and modifications where appropriate. Under vendor copyright.
• vendor-models -- Vendor-supplied geometry models. Under vendor copyright.

Gallery

2020 Board:

2025 Board:

This is the end of the file.