# 4. Electronics Production - working - add own board info
This week we were tasked with making and testing a Microcontroller Development board. In the new Fab Academy 2024 schedule, this is the first (of many) weeks dealing with electronics. This week's assignment is all about the physical construction of electronics boards, meaning cutting out traces on a [Copper Clad Board](https://www.fortex.co.uk/product/fr4-uncoated-single-sided-copper-clad-pcb-laminate/) and attaching electronic [SMD](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface-mount_technology) components. It doesn't deal with the aspect of designing a board or programming a [SOC (system on a chip)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_on_a_chip). Those will come in later assignments.
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## Individual Assignment
"Make and test a microcontroller development board".
### Rewritten assignment
- I initially did this assignment in a previous cycle heavily documenting the production of the [Quentorres RP2040 hello board](https://gitlab.fabcloud.org/pub/programmers/quentorres) design given to us.
- I had a lot of issues with the software used for generating the toolpathing for cutting my traces. I didn't want to lose all that insight, since I thought they were a great learning experience and may be useful for other students who might encounter similar problems.
- I later made my own board that I designed in the [electronics design week](https://fabacademy.org/2021/labs/vancouver/students/james-khan/assignments/week08/). Instead of removing the detailed explainations from when I initially wrote the assignment, I decided to instead just add in extra notes and pictures from my personnaly designed board.
### Development board
I won't be designing the board myself. Instead I made the Fab Academy's recommended board, the [Quentorres RP2040 hello board](https://gitlab.fabcloud.org/pub/programmers/quentorres), a development board based on the [XIAO RP2040 microcontroller](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RP2040). I won't be making the Quentorresaurus board just yet. The purpose of a development board is to be able to easily connect "things" to your microcontroller to try programs on it. The "naked" [SEEED rp2040](https://www.seeedstudio.com/XIAO-RP2040-v1-0-p-5026.html) board would be difficult to use without building a larger board around it since its connection points are small and very close to one another. Making a development board helps alleviate this problem.
