Getting started with Kokopelli

This day we started off with Kokopelli. Curious to know the meaning of the word,I tried searching for it. And I found out that it’s the name given to a humpbacked flute player, considered as a fertility Deity.

koko

Well here we are using Kokopelli software developed by Neil Gershenfeld for making circuit board designs. It uses a coding environment having an output window for showing a graphical representation of the code as shown here:

kokopelli_screenshot

We covered the following during the day:

• Installing Kokopelli
• Opening a .cad file using it
• Figuring out the meaning of each module (PCB parameters, components, etc)
• Added a new set of components and drew the traces for it

Installing Kokopelli

Step 1:
To install this, first I had to download the Koko_retro.zip file from here: link

Step 2:
Next I had to install the dependencies for python using this command: 

sudo apt-get install python python-wxgtk2.8 python-dev python-pip gcc g++ libpng12-dev libgif-dev make bash okular libboost-thread-dev libboost-system-dev cmake 
(refer: http://kokompe.cba.mit.edu/downloads.html)

Step 3:
And then I used this command to install numpy (refer: https://github.com/mkeeter/kokopelli/wiki/Installing)

numpy

sudo pip install numpy PyOpenGL PyOpenGL_accelerate

Step 5:
Next, I unzipped the koko_retro.zip file and navigated to the newly created folder from the terminal and used the following commands:

home

Problems faced
When launching the software, I noticed that the circle was not appearing on the graphical interface and made me aware that it was not installed correctly. After which, we tried using this command: sudo make install in the folder of the install, which solved the problem. A screenshot of the problem:

problem

Editing a design

First download this .cad file from here: link

And then open the file from Kokopelli.

kokopelli
To output the version of the file we want (traces, outline, circuit design, etc). We only use the first three versions of the file. Always put .png when exporting files.

# uncomment for desired output: 
#output = "traces, labels, and exterior" 
#output = "traces and exterior" 
#output = "interior" 
#output = "exterior" 
#output = "traces"
#output = "holes" 
#output = "solder mask"

Just uncomment the kind of output you want from the above lines (line no: 21)

para

And to edit the width of the board and other parameters, go to line 3595. You can edit these lines to change the dimensions and other parameters:

w = .016 
width = 1 
height = .93 
mask = .004 
x = 1 
y = 1 
z = -.005 
d = .06  
pcb = PCB(x,y,width,height,mask)

dimens

Next, I tried to do the following:

The coding required to do the four operations above are marked with arrows in the figure below:

led

Download files: helloworld.cad