The MSP430 SPEEDBOARD
Description
This cool blue little board is a simple, cheap, and cheerful development board for the MSP4305172* microcontroller by Texas Instruments... This design came about because I had taken an interest in the MSP4305172 for another project, alas when I went to look on TI's website for an available evaluation/dev board, none was found.
So my only choice was to roll a printed circuit board for this processor, and I decided, why not make it cool while I am doing it...
So that's exactly what I did-
I shaped the PC board in the shape of Sonic's head, and added a number of cute little symbols and motifs from the game including the "GOTTA GO FAST" catchphrase.
Initial Design (20 - 25 August 2025)
I initially drew some design of this on paper with pencil but then went straight to Altium Designer and did the whole design there.
It was all one-shot, done and dusted by the 25th of August, and then I sent the Gerber files to JLCPCB in China to fabricate the PCB.
The Initial 3D views from Altium looked so damn cool I had to include them here:
Component Side
Solder Side
Printed Circuits to my Door (1-2 Sept 2025)
With Sonic speed, in just under a week, the printed circuit boards arrived...
Delivered with Sonic Speed
I got five (5) of them!!
Sonic on the solder side
Assembly and Testing (4-6 September 2025)
This board was really easy to assemble. In fact the biggest issue was the fact that I didn't have some of the parts, so I had to drive to the local electronics store to get a box header and a DC barrel jack socket. I also needed push buttons but those I reused from another board.
Once all the components were obtained it was completed like so:
Demonstration Videos
YouTube video showing test application running on this boardAnother video demonstrating this board displaying an image of Stitch** on a graphic LCD display
Demonstration Code (Code Composer Studio)
Graphics LCD Demo with Stitch
Resources
Schematic Diagram Rev 1.0 [PDF]
as in Lilo and Stitch © Disney