Course Highlights
16.682 Prototyping Avionics
Spring 2006

The F-15E Strike Eagle: An array of avionics and electronics systems gives it the capability to fight at low altitude, day or night, and in all weather. (Image courtesy of Armchair Aviator on Flickr.)
Course Description
In the past building prototypes of electronic components for new projects/products was limited to using protoboards and wirewrap. Manufacturing a printed-circuit-board was limited to final production, where mistakes in the implementation meant physically cutting traces on the board and adding wire jumpers - the final products would have these fixes on them! Today that is no longer the case, while you will still cut traces and use jumpers when debugging a board, manufacturing a new final version without the errors is a simple and relatively inexpensive task. For that matter, manufacturing a prototype printed circuit board which you know is likely to have errors but which will get the design substantially closer to the final product than a protoboard setup is not only possible, but desirable. In this class, you'll learn to design, build, and debug printed-circuit-boards.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT:
This course content is a redistribution of MIT Open Courses. Access to the course materials is free to all users.
This course content is a redistribution of MIT Open Courses. Access to the course materials is free to all users.