Understanding the Schematic and Board downloads

[kevinnathenbowie]

I'm taking a look at the Schematic and Board downloads in Eagle 5.6 Freeware. I'm very new to this and trying to tackle building my own TV-B-Gone and doing the programming myself. What I don't understand is where the power goes to from the battery pack. I see no connections from the red or black wire going to any part on the circuit board. Also, I wanted to make sure there wasn't anything else that didn't make sense, and the capacitor doesn't go to anything either. The Schematic shows the battery pack going to a lot of stuff, but I don't see the connection on the board download. I'm planning on printing the board design both top and bottom and creating my own circuit board using the toner transfer method. But if I print out the design as is I'm pretty sure my power is going to a dead end. Any help would be great, and be very detailed since I'm so new to this. Thanks in advance.

[adafruit]

are you well versed in how to read schematics?

[Len17]

The Schematic shows the battery pack going to a lot of stuff, but I don't see the connection on the board download.

I'm not very proficient with EAGLE and this is the thing I find most annoying about reading EAGLE board layouts.

The TV-B-Gone board follows the common practice of using the "empty" space on each side of the board for power and ground planes. The way this is specified in EAGLE is a bit strange, and it's not clearly displayed on the screen.

Try this: Load up the board layout (tvbgonev12.brd). In the command box, type "show gnd". That will highlight all the pads that are connected to the ground plane (but it doesn't show the actual copper area). Similarly, "show vcc".

There's an EAGLE tutorial by westfw on instructables.com that describes how these power planes are created:
http://www.instructables.com/id/ED8F0BLBTCES9J6DBO/

[kevinnathenbowie]

Ok, the "show vcc" and "show gnd" commands helped a lot. I've figured out how everything is setup to work except capacitor 1 and capacitor 2. I have vcc and gnd going to both capacitors but as far as I can tell from the schematic both of these are coming directly from the battery. This leaves me confused because if both vcc and gnd are coming from the battery, what's the point of the capacitors? I'm pretty sure I just don't know how to read the schematic.

So my question is, what component sends power to capacitor 1, and capacitor 2? The capacitor is storing energy to use when I push the switch, right? So then what component is the capacitor storing energy for?

I'm pretty sure the stored energy is not intended for LED 1,2,3,4 or 5. That leaves the microcontroler, and ICSP.

My Plan - I want to print the board design onto photo gloss paper and transfer it onto a copper clad board and make my own circuit board. Looking at the design in Eagle 5.6.0. I dont see how anything will work. I am planning on adding lines to connect GND and VCC to the LED's, Transistors, XTL1, Resistors, and Switch. Will this work? Then, I think all I'm missing is capacitor 1 and 2, microcontroller, and ICSP. With everything connected right on the circuit board it should all work when I solder in the parts, right? Am I on the right track?

[kevinnathenbowie]

Ok, I figured out my problem. It's the Power Plane talked about in the instructable link. Now I see that the top of the board has one giant power plane going to all of the GND's and the bottom has another power plane going to all of the VCC's. Now my question is, how do I see the power plane in Eagle so that I can print it out and etch the design into the copper clad laminate. Currently all I'm printing out is the blue and red line connections. What do I need to change?

[kevinnathenbowie]

Thanks for your help, I'm ok now, I figured it out. You have to type "ratsnest" in the command box before printing. This makes the power plane the shape it needs to be instead of just a dotted outline.