These boards were supposed to look amazing. However, they turned out BLANK!
First of all I was really lucky they arrived. They were supposed to be sent with the RoboBrrd Brain Boards, but for some reason they weren’t. However they were mailed the same day, so how can you figure that one out? 
I didn’t have a chance to solder these up since I received them a few hours before getting on the bus to Montreal Mini Maker Faire.
So now it is time to have some fun with these boards, let’s add in some LEDs! Since there are no labels (tip: in geda pressing ‘h’ while having your mouse over the component will display/hide its component name label), I checked with the schematic first and figured out that the circle is supposed to be positive.
These traces really look nice without a fill around them!
The positioning of the LEDs looks geometrically unpleasant without the artwork there.
Each RoboGlyph needs 12 LEDs and 4 resistors. Wow, 24 LEDs sure goes by quickly. Maybe in the future we’ll be able to buy ‘a dozen LEDs’ from our corner stores. 
They kind of look like a goofy flower.
I’ve never really played with charlieplexing before, but I tested a few of the wires and some LEDs did light up. I’ll be experimenting with it more later on to get it working. Maybe RoboBrrd can wear it as a pendant or something. 
Now it is time to investigate why this has happened. It’s probably something weird with the top layer. Here is a screenshot of the various gerber files. From left to right it is, version 1, 2, and 3. Version 1 is the original design, 2 is after Laen suggested I make a fill, and 3 is that suggestion after confirmation that it would work but now a little tidier.
However, if we turn off the top layer and look at the top mask layer, this is what it looks like.
Going even further, this is the top silk layer.
So I’m not really sure what is going wrong here. I’ll probably post this question in some forums and see what the answers and suggestions are. Hopefully it can get figured out soon so I can order the boards and have them shipped in time for Maker Faire NY!
Thanks to everyone who donated to my robotics fund which contributed to the fabbing costs of this!
It was an interesting experience. Next time hopefully these will turn out a lot better.
As @missmoun said:
“Epic Fails make glorious memories as well.”
