Talk:Teaching Binary/@comment-5194407-20120708193334

I tried Kicad and the freerouter that it uses but in some cases it did produce a single-sided board - it went most of the way then got stuck with the last few connections but just kept trying. There didn't seem to be a way to stop it and save what it had done. It was great for double sided boards though, very quick without many through-board connections (are they called vias?).

DesignSpark PCB was easier to use and stopped routing tracks if it couldn't make a connection, so I could finish it off manually.

Originally I wanted an LCD to display the ASCII equivalent values, or to allow messages to be written but it made the overall cost too high, and I didn't want to use just an LCD. As it goes the LED display isn't bright enough when multiplexed, so there needs to be some redesign to use latched outputs, or to abandon LEDs and use the LCD.

I may well have gone as far as I can with this for the moment as I'm working on other things but I might come back to it - I was pleased to get it working as I've never taken anything beyond a breadboard before.