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Scripting KiCad to make coils - I've been diving deep into the world of PCB (Printed Circuit Board) coils, inspired by Carl Bugeja's incredible PCB motors! After deciding to set up an automated process for creating the coils rather than manually drawing them (can you imagine?), I found our main constraints became track width and spacing, and the number of layers we could use. During the process of creating spirals for our coils, I encountered some interesting problems - spirals are easy, but what about arbitrarily shaped coils? My attempts ultimately lead me to develop more efficient algorithms and KiCad plugins to generate these special coils. A rewarding challenge of math, programming, and electronics! My code has been published on GitHub, and I’m eager to see how others might make use of it!

KiCad PCBNew Python Scripting Cheat Sheet - Recently, I've been dipping my toes into the world of KiCad action plugins, specifically one for generating coils. In this post, I've jotted down some key learnings that would serve as a guide for myself in the future and for anyone else interested in building KiCad action plugins. Here, you'll find insights on getting the current board, adding objects, specifying the start and end points for tracks, creating vias, adding silk screen text, flipping text to the other side, connecting things to your PCB, and more. You'll find code snippets for these and links to additional resources. As my understanding deepens, I'll keep updating this post with new findings and corrections of any errors.

Axial Flux PCB Motors - Wedge or Spiral Coils - Which is best? - I've delved deep into the reason why people prefer to use wedge-shaped coils when building PCB motors. After a lot of Googling, a bit of Python scripting, and a ton of visuals, what emerged was a very compelling argument for the humble wedge coil. Turns out, radial lines are the heroes in the story – the more the merrier – because these are what generate the fields in the correct direction to crank up the torque. Don’t get too attached though; there may be alternative, more efficient coil designs yet to discover, but those are topics for another day!

No Power? No Problem! A Wireless Pi Doom Machine - In my latest wireless charging experiments, I got my hands on a set of wireless charging PCBs and dove into testing different voltage inputs and their efficiency levels. It was interesting to realise that the 5V input managed to provide a decent efficiency of 73%, while 12V input struggled and heated the receiver board excessively. With the perks and limits of this setup explored, I took a whirl at creating a wireless Pi Doom machine. It worked like a charm! However, I quickly noticed the need to split charging and boost board into two different modules - a project to look forward to. Half the fun is getting there! Check out the video [here](https://youtu.be/glCIuOoFm7U) for more detail on the project.

Getting started with Box2D - Just gave a enlightening talk on Box2D at the LiDG and have prepared a step-by-step walkthrough on creating a simple pinball game using the open sourced 2D physics engine! You'll learn the concepts of Body, Shape, Friction, etc. as well as how to build and run the Box2D engine for iPhone. By the end of the blog, you'll be equipped to create a basic working game in a couple of 100 lines of code! Don't forget to check out my slides and demos linked in the blog!