Steven's nameplate

A desk nameplate for Steven Moss of the Astera Institute, built three ways. Each revision is a small experiment with its own question, method, result and files, published the day it was made. The failures stay on the page next to the fixes.

This is Rev 2, loaded when it scrolls into view. The guided walkthrough starts on its own; the PCB, Schematic and Parts tabs are live. Open it full screen.

Why three revisions. Rev 1 worked electrically but its N read as an H. Rev 2 fixed the font and moved to real, stocked part numbers. Rev 3 asked a different question: skip the per-person circuit entirely, and laser the name into one standard LED-lit board. That is the plate Steven will hold at the NSF PCLNet Summit in DC.

The three revisions

Rev 1: 3 x 5 LED dot matrixsuperseded

58 white LEDs spell STEVEN, powered from an iPhone charger. 0 DRC errors and every net connected after a layout sweep that is documented in full, including the router's silent opens. Failed as typography: three columns cannot draw an N.

Full write-up Plain text Live 3D

Rev 2: 5 x 7 LED dot matrixdesigned

94 white LEDs in a 5 x 7 font, so the N has a real diagonal. Every part is a stocked Adom Basic Part with an MPN, the draw is about 400 mA, and the board resizes itself from one line of text. 0 DRC errors, 98 of 98 nets connected.

Full write-up Plain text Live 3D

Rev 3: name laser-ablated into the silkscreenmade

The plate Steven receives. Adonis Lysandrou's standard blank board (Fusion 360, six side-firing LEDs), with "Steven Moss" on the first line and the Astera logo on the second, ablated into the soldermask by the workcell's UV laser from a Nameplate Generator job. Per-person work drops from a new PCB to a laser job.

Full write-up Plain text Live 3D of the plate Board designer's page

What changed, and why

	Rev 1	Rev 2	Rev 3
How the name is made	58 LEDs, 3 x 5 font	94 LEDs, 5 x 7 font	Laser-ablated silkscreen, lit by 6 edge LEDs
Board	98.4 x 26.4 mm	136.4 x 44.4 mm	160 x 48 mm
Designed with	tscircuit 0.0.1753, AI	tscircuit 0.0.2375, AI	Fusion 360 Electronics, human
Parts	generic, no MPNs	all stocked, with MPNs	OSRAM, GCT, Royalohm, with MPNs
Draw at 5 V	about 520 mA	about 400 mA	6 LEDs at 100 ohm
New work per name	a new PCB	a new PCB (one line of code)	a new laser job
Status	superseded	verified, not fabricated	made, handed over in DC
Lesson	DRC passes a board with dead nets; the N needs 5 columns	a newer router, plus a geometric connectivity check, is what got a clean board	one board for everyone; the per-person work is a laser job

Open science

This page is a worked example, for the Astera Institute, of how Adom's AI publishes an experiment as soon as it exists. The full scorecard lists every rule and where this page meets it, meets it partly, or does not yet.

Astera asks for	Here
Publish when ready for reuse, not when a paper is written	each revision published the day it was made
Code MIT or more open	yes, MIT
Data CC0	yes
Protocols and text CC BY	yes, CC BY 4.0; each revision has a reproduce section
Funder with ROR ID	U.S. NSF, ROR 021nxhr62
Negative results	every failed router layout
Register of outputs	outputs.csv with SHA-256 per file
DOI and Zenodo deposit	not yet, the gap our proposed pipeline closes
Code on GitHub	partial, git on the wiki, no GitHub mirror

Files and licenses

Board source and scripts (rev*/source/): MIT
Data (circuit.json, 3D models, gerbers, BOMs): CC0 1.0
Write-ups, photos, artwork: CC BY 4.0
Every output with its SHA-256: outputs.csv. How to cite: CITATION.cff. The brief and every request: plan.md

Provenance

Requested by John Lauer (PI, Adom Industries, NSF PCL Test Bed node, Fort Worth). Revs 1 and 2 designed by Claude (Anthropic) in Adom's Hydrogen desktop with tscircuit and adom-tsci. Rev 3 board designed and ablated by Adonis Lysandrou; laser job generator by Aditya Angajala. The node is funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation (ROR 021nxhr62). Made for the Astera Institute (ROR 00ydx1s47), which did not fund it.