Work with datasheets - Eagle Tutorial

- [Instructor] Now before we can start making our own custom components, we need to get a little comfortable with data sheets. And, if you're coming from outside the electrical engineering community, these things can be pretty intimidating. Often they're many pages long filled with very dense technical text. But I'll show you how we can dive in here, and pull out the few pieces of information we need to make things work in Eagle. You can download a data sheet from any electronics manufacturer. If you can just find a manufacturer like Jamco or Digi-Key and look up a part, there will always be a link to a data sheet right there for ya. This little element that I've picked, I've picked in part because it's relatively simple. So it has three tabs, and you'll notice that they're labeled three two and one. And also V in, V out and adjustable or ground. So this is a voltage regulator, it's a common component where you might take a voltage of a higher number, say like 12, and then different voltage regulators will adjust that down to a different level, like five volts for example. So this has a basic function, you'll find it in a lot of different kinds of designs, and in order to incorporate it, we need to know a few things. So, the pen definitions will be one of those things, and we also need to figure out about how big this is going to be when it's sitting on the circuit board, and also exactly the dimensions of its' pads that will soldered to the circuit board. And this is a surface mount component right, so we're no longer working in through hole this is a little tiny element that's just going to sit atop some pads and be soldered on. So as I scroll down you'll see lots and lots of information. This will have to do with the internal mechanics of that device. We are going to skip right by that. We'll see a lot of things about temperature restrictions, and operating characteristics. How hot the solder can be when you apply it. We don't need any of that. We're going to come all the way down here, to the bottom, to right here. So the type of package we're working with is called an SOT223-3L. It's not important that you know that specifically, but just note that this data sheet includes a bunch of different types of packages that all have different kinds of layout. So the first thing we'll want to find is this package so we can target it, and then if we take a look in here, we can see the overall dimensions of the device as it sits on the circuit board, and we can also see here in black, the size of the metal pads that are going to be used to solder this piece down, so that we can take advantage of its functions, and all those little measurements are laid out right there. So we know the order of the pads, and their numbers. We know the package dimensions, and then we also know any names, and values. So for example, this will be a voltage regulator. That's its name and then its value would be five volts, and then armed with that information, we can transfer this into our own custom part in Eagle.