WHAT IS FRITZING, HOW DOES IT WORK AND HOW TO USE IT?

WHAT IS FRITZING, HOW DOES IT WORK AND HOW TO USE IT?-Uncategorized

WHAT AND FOR WHOM IS FRITZING?

In the spirit of the development of processing and Arduino microcontroller, University of Potsdam has developed a very interesting platform called Fritzing. Fritzing is open-source EDA software for people who are not engineers. The perfect tool for designers, inventors, hobbyists and educators for creating a prototype or even making PCB. If you browsed some of our tutorials or were in the workshops, you could have seen what it looks like in practice. If you want to use it yourself, we will try to provide some help for that through this tutorial. To begin, download Fritzing here.

FIRST TIME WITH FRITZINGU

Tabs Welcome, Breadboard, Schematic, PCB and Code represent main navigation through Frtizing. Welcome is the initial tab that contains the latest news. Other tabs will be briefly introduced, and Breadboard tab will be explained later in greater detail.

Breadboard
We believe that this is the part where you will spend most of the time in Fritzing. It allows breadboard (experimental board) view, that gives the feeling of physical stacking of components.

Schematic
A tool for creating electronic chart. The components and modules used in one of these views are automatically in others, too,and only thing that’s important is to create special links for them (route them). We can do this manually or use Autoroute option.

PCB

A tool for creating printed electronic circuit board. Fritzing Fab allows us to create plates designed by Fritzing.

Code
This option allows you to write and modify code and upload directly to the Arduino board. Use it as you would use the Arduino IDE, do not forget to set the board and COM port.

<h2 id=”Installing new Parts“>Installing new Parts
The right sidebar contains all modules and components that are available to us. We use them so that we draw them to one of the views that we use, and we find them using a search engine or bins that are actually categorically arranged modules. Frtizing comes with a limited number of modules, so you’ll soon find yourself in need of expanding.For individual products, you can find links to download Fritzing documents, while the entire library can be downloaded from our GitHub profile. Part installing: The new part can be installed easily via File – Open. Part can then be found within the right menu under the heading Part -Mine.

 

HOW TO USE FRITZING

We’ll show how to use the Fritzing on example of Dasduino and LEDs on the D13 pin.

When entering the Fritzing on Breadboard view,  you will see the experimental board, which you will almost always use in other combinations, so do not touch that. Part can be deleted with delete button or delete from menu which is invoked by clicking the right mouse button. I assume you already imported Dasduino board in Fritzing according to the instructions above, so we’ll find it by entering the Search and typing croduino or click on the tab Mine and simply drag it to the window with the experimental board.

We will do the same for the LED light and resistor. We will put them on the experimental board, by dragging them in identical way as if we did it physically.

According to the markings on the resistor we see that it is 220Ω, so let’s change it to 330Ω. We select it by clicking on it with left mouse button, and the box will appear around it (as shown above). This action will open us Inspector tab under the Parts tab that we’ve already used. In the same tab, under Properties – change 220Ω resistance to 330Ω.

The same thing can be done for all parts which have these options enabled. For example, we can change the color of the LEDs in blue.

Each pin has its own label, for example, if you put the mouse pointer on the right foot of the LEDs (as shown) a mark will appear as anode which means that it is a (+) positive pole. If we want to get a more visual sketch, we will simply click on the tab and drag it to another pin breadboard.

We still have to connect the bucket diode and resistor with Dasduino. The vertical green lines indicate the lines on the breadboard connections. The left foot, the cathode of the LED needs to be connected via resistor to GND Dasduino pin. We do this by clicking on any of the green dots, in line with the resistor, and press-hold a key while moving the cable on GND Dasduino pin.

Default color with which we mark GND is black, so let’s fix it. Right-click anywhere on the cable. Select menu Wire color, then color Black.

If you don’t want the cable to go strictly straight, hold the Ctrl key on Windows / Linux or Cmd on OS X systems, and the right-curve the cable. Also, try to move one module (eg. Dasduino) within Fritzing sketch and you will see that they are permanently connected.

It only remains to connect the anode of LEDs with D13 Dasduino pin. The procedure is the same as in the step above, additionally we can choose cable, make it orange and twist it.

The image of the project can be rendered with File – Export – and choose the format.

We hope that we have managed to convey the basic use of Fritzing. We wish you successful work with Fritzing.