Synthesiser oscillator control panel schematic, redesigned to use an ARM microcontroller instead of logic chips. The second image is a sketch of what it will physically look like. 6 LED switches and 4 faders. #synth#electronics#cad#kicad
Unsere letzte Folge ist zwar schon etwas her, aber wer sie noch nicht gehört hat: Wir sprachen u.a. über #KiCad 8.0 – #Electronics#Design#Automation mit vielen
What? A comprehensive platform for the design of electronic circuits / printed circuit boards.
◉Tools for editing electrical / PCB diagrams
◉View designs in 3D for better understanding
◉Extensive library of electronic components
◉Facilitates the generation of Gerber files for manufacturing
Woohoo I am a KiCad master now! Or at least I know enough to default to it instead of Eagle. Finally. Plus I found a neat capacitive touch sensor chip that I got working in CircuitPython and Arduino on a Pico #KiCad#CircuitPython#RaspberryPiPico#CapacitiveTouch
The #kicad -cli command is pretty neat (although it lacks better docs)
I can now generate a pdf of the schematic and board in around 20 seconds on sourcehut builds with it. It currently outputs 3 pdfs which are manually merged together to make a single build artifact.
#PBC layout question for anyone who knows more than I do about the subject (essentially everyone)...
Is it ok to put decoupling caps under the #iCE40 package (like the 3 red ones in the image) or am I better off keeping them on the same side as the IC (like the blue ones)? I only have 2 layers to play with and lots of routing on one (still to do on blue), so plan to use the other as (mostly) ground plane and power anyway.
Hey #audio people. The #KiCad library is currently discussing how audio connectors footprints (3.5mm and similar) should be designed. We are pretty sure what naming scheme for pins we want to use, but are struggling with the silkscreen markings.
Is there any value in putting a polarity marker on such a footprint? If yes, on which pin?
We are thinking of not requiring any Polarity/Pin1 marker at all. And leave it to the board designer to add more marking if required.
Watch out, I'm a hardware designer now! My first board is here and it works!
Super happy with the "ambient light" effect:) There's one LED shining at the back into the hand, and another behind the screen, giving the impression of light passing through the PCB. Quite mesmerizing.
I still need to put side LEDs on (one for each of the touch pads), but those tiny SK6812-4020 turned out to be way beyond my amazing soldering skills 😅
#KiCAD is giving me a run for my money today. 6 hours in, and I haven't found a good workflow for reusing a schematic and layout between multiple projects ("design blocks" in other CAD).
So far, my best bet is a time-consuming and fragile process: put several projects in the same folder, link hierarchical sheets, and copy-paste the layout from one project to the others.
@stargirl@azonenberg@mntmn , seems like all of you make complex hardware in kicad and have likely run into this problem?
I'm pretty excited by this news from the #KiCAD 8 announcement page: "With the help of 8 new librarians joining the effort, the library gained over 1500 new symbols and 760 footprints, and had thousands of updates to fix or improve existing parts." https://www.kicad.org/blog/2024/02/Version-8.0.0-Released/
Had this unbuilt keyboard prototype lying around for way over a year now.
Fully finished PCB with working firmware and everything.
Most of the parts for the case already 3D printed out just waiting for assembly (only thing missing is the switch backplate)...
I even got really nice looking color matching keycaps for it.
One of those projects I guess 😶
I should probably finish it...
Did you know that there is a awesome wiki for the #KiCad library?
It has pages for footprint and symbol design, with lots of background info regarding the KLC rules and IPC standards.
With lots of tips and tricks to the creation and submission for the official library.
The newest addition is a page that has Pin1 silkscreen markers that you can copy to the clipboard and paste inside KiCad.
I've seen people advise against using PCB auto routing. Is that advice still valid? Are their other constraints to that advice?
For context, I’m laying out and routing my first ever PCB in KiCad. It’s a 6502 system on a Z50Bus card. The Freerouting plug-in seems to do a decent job, but I realize there's a lot I don't know.
In the past the #KiCad library used the confusing IPC-7351 polarity markers. This had made many people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.
Fortunately the IPC has altered the deal in the new IPC-7352. TL;DR: of that new recommendation is 'do what you want, but keep it consistent'.
The #KiCad library team has selected a filled chevron. It will replace the confusing styles from the past.
If you've got a minute, give https://try.manyfold.app/ a go, I want to see how often it crashes due to resource limits on the very very small node I'm running it on.
@Floppy yeah, wasn't trying to distract you 😀 and a federated/self-hosted Thingiverse is an excellent thing in itself.
I'm just pondering why I don't really use Thingiverse to host anything myself, and that's because my design files (a) are often stored as #FreeCAD files rather than #STL, and (b) tend to live in a "physical" or "case" folder inside a repo that often also has an "electronics" folder with some #Kicad files and a "firmware" folder containing code
It is great to see how many of our users design their project using @kicad, they accounted for 42.25% of all projects created last month. Eagle comes second place with 12.44% and Fritzing ranks 3rd with 12.29% #aisler#kicad#pcb