A PCB (printed circuit board) is a common piece of electrical engineering tech. If you’ve ever seen a green board with white markings and copper markings, you know what we’re talking about here. Although most of us don’t stop and think about what actually goes into the products that we use, a PCB is a key part of a lot of the technical devices that we use day in day out, and a very important piece too. Electronics designers work hard on Altium software and other products to ensure their PCBs are designed with precision, ensuring your devices work exactly as intended. If you want to know more, keep reading. Below are four gadgets you had no idea made use of PCBs.
Your Car
Every car has a circuit board inside it, and the newer the car, the more circuit boards it will contain. The reason for this is that newer cars tend to have a lot of additional tech. Everything from your car stereo to your self-opening doors, your reversing aids, and your automatic windows requires a circuit board in order to operate as intended. All of the signals and sensors on your car’s dashboard have to pass by a PCB before the lights come on too. It’s really quite astonishing when you think about the tech hidden away!
Your Digital Watch (or Clock)
If you wear a digital watch, or have a digital clock in your house, you can bet it has a PCB inside of it – yes even the small tiny watch you wear on nights’ out. Electronics designers are used to working with small spaces, and have perfected many techniques over the years that have enabled them to build tiny circuit boards that work exactly as intended. It’s crazy to think about how such a small device contains so much tech, but it does.
Your Computer
Okay so this one is probably pretty common knowledge, but when you think about it, computers actually help to make PCBs too. Computer aided design software is key in their production, so not only does the computer you own have a PCB inside it, enabling it to work, but the software used on your computer, enables designers to make more PCB designs. Pretty special huh?
Your Children’s Toys
Small children love nothing more than those annoying plastic toys that emit bright lights and loud noises whenever they are pressed. While they drive plenty of adults mad, kids get hours of fun out of them, especially when they’re in the toddler stage and just learning to recognize their surroundings. Whether it’s a toy till or a toy phone, if it emits a bright light or a loud noise, you can bet it’s being powered by a PCB. Even some of the Barbie toys have a PCB hidden inside of them!
So, while you may not have known exactly what a PCB was when you started reading this post, it’s pretty clear how important they are and how much we should thank PCB designers for everything they do. Without them, we wouldn’t have half the gadgets we rely on in day to day life.
