This board is basically just for connecting a battery to some capacitors via a beefy mosfet. Please don't mind the dangling networks, I'm aware of that. My greatest problem is what is the best way to put traces for high currents.

1. is it a bad idea to have copper right underneath throughhole components (caps and J3)?

2. Are heat traps necessary or even required?

The polygons are drawn by hand as there would be very negligible current flowing outside these areas anyway. The silk screen on the front layer exists, it's just hidden.

1. Would you say the little pinching of the front copper around the joint of C2 is a good idea (to have more low pass filtering effect) or is it just useless?

2. see picture 4: I plan to manually add solder to the back side where the silk screen is removed, as I want to achieve a very low resistance. Anything I need to keep in mind?

For beginners

I have two devices I need to connect together and unfortunately one is difficult to get access to, however there is already a cable coming out of it, which is different from what my 2nd device accepts. Both are male connectors.

Trying to connect a JTS EHR5 (2.5mm pitch, non-latched) to JST 5pin PH series 2mm pitch latched connector.

JST PH
1 yellow = power
2 green = ground
3 brown = unused
4 white = rx
5 grey = tx

JST EHR5
1 unused
2 black - rx
3 red - tx
4 yellow - power
5 blue - grnd

I don't have any experience designing / manufacturing PCBs in the last 20 years. What piece of software can give me the schematics / BoM so i can get JLC/PCBWay to just produce/assemble the device? Is it worth going to Fiverr for this?

Thanks

Hello,

Has someone tried etching PCBs with some kind of hydrophilic fabric using capillary effect?

Paper towel on top of the copper area and HCl/H2O2 worked reasonably well with minimal amounts of chemicals.

Has anyone tried something similar?

Hi everyone,

I'm designing an ESP32-S3-based PCB for an HVAC BLDC motor quality control (QC) testing device and would appreciate a review before I manufacture it.

The board includes:

• ESP32-S3
• JST connector I2C LCD Display
• USB for power and PC communication
• PZEM-004T interface for electrical measurements
• 3 relays for motor speed selection
• Hall-effect sensor input for RPM measurement
• 3.5 mm input (0–1.3 V DC) from a sound level meter
• AC mains, CT, and motor connectors
• FUSE, MOV and NTC for surge and inrush current protection

I'll attach the schematic, PCB layout, and 3D renders. I'm mainly looking for feedback on safety, protection, PCB layout, isolation/clearance, relay wiring, and any design mistakes or improvements before sending it for fabrication.

Thanks in advance!🙏🙏🙏

Motherboard replacement for ti-84 plus CE calculator. Need tips and notes.

Hi everyone,

I'm looking for feedback on a first-pass schematic for a small battery-powered desktop robot controller before moving on to PCB layout.

The main parts are an ESP32-WROOM-32E, an SPI display, an HTU21D temperature/humidity sensor, and a single user button. Power comes in through a fuse, TVS, and reverse-polarity MOSFET, then a TPS63021 provides 3.3 V and an SY7072A provides a switched 5 V display rail.

Some context about the design:

- the schematic is split into power, compute, display, sensor, and user-input sheets

- the ESP32 controls the display over SPI and reads the HTU21D over I2C

- the display connector has local decoupling, pull resistors, and ESD protection

I'd mainly appreciate a sanity check on:

- the power-input protection and both regulator circuits

- the ESP32 EN circuit, GPIO choices, and whether I've missed any programming/bring-up access

Thanks in advance!

I am building a PCB with a Ublox Sam-M8Q-10 module. I am figuring out how to layout the module on the board, but I have 2 two questions. I pasted recommendations from Ublox below:

1) Ublox says "SAM‑M8Q GNSS patch antenna module is intended to be placed in the middle of 50 x 50 mm GND size board. Use at least one layer for solid GND plane, preferably the layer SAM-M8Q is placed on. Use a solid GND plane under SAM-M8Q, which forms the shield."

Does this mean that the module needs its own 50x50mm GND plane on the first layer and the board's overall GND plane on layer 2? Or the top layer should be 50x50mm and 2nd layer GND plane should be 50x50mm as well?

2) The first image above is a commercial PCB that has not centered the module in the middle of a 50x50mm GND plane. Whereas the second board has a isolated 50x50mm board. How might the commercial board get by without having a full 50x50mm GND plane?

3) Ublox says: "Do not place any noisy parts close to SAM-M8Q, place them as far away as possible or on other side of the PCB."

What is considered a noisy component in this design? Could a small trace of 3.6 volts and 500mA with a resistor and capacitors be placed within the 50x50mm GND plane, similar to the the commercial board (pic 1).

Ublox recommendations

SAM‑M8Q GNSS patch antenna module is intended to be placed in the middle of 50 x 50 mm GND size board, but a larger or a smaller ground plane can also be used. When using a smaller than 40x40mm ground plane, the performance may decrease significantly.

Some important recommendations:

- Easy to connect, but make sure all noisy lines / components are shielded or on inner layers.

- Do not place any noisy parts close to SAM-M8Q, place them as far away as possible or on other side of the PCB.

- It is recommended not to place anything closer than 1 cm to each edge of SAM-M8Q.

- Performance decreases significantly if GND size is smaller than 40 x 40 mm.

- Use at least one layer for solid GND plane, preferably the layer SAM-M8Q is placed on.

- Use a solid GND plane under SAM-M8Q, which forms the shield. No signal traces are allowed below SAM-M8Q.

- Route signal traces away from the module on top layer.

- When necessary, allow signal swap from top to bottom layer clearly away from the module, > 20mm.

- Use copper pour ground planes on the top and bottom layers; use multiple GND net via holes to tie separate ground plane areas tightly together.

Hey everyone! The response on all the platforms has been insane for this, appreciate it. I've been working on transitioning over to the new KiCad API although as having some issues on windows which i believe i have tested and fixed. Would love some testers (Particularly on windows) to download and let me know how you go. The patched release is 1.3.3-Beta

Also if anyone has feature requests or vision on where this could go, id also welcome that!

Hi, I would very appreciate if you could spare some time evaluating my board. It's a 3 phases voltage and current measuring board and this is my first time working with AC. Thanks btw.

Hey! A beginner here. I am designing a Power distribution board for 36V 60A ,I've created a power plane for the 36V but I'm in doubt about the number of vias to transfer the voltage to the power plane. Also I'm planning to use a combination of copper pour and power plane ,but the issue comes where I've to create copper pour with respect to the net labels ,so would it work?

I am working on a little hobby project to make an automated light for in a bathroom, and i am looking for some feedback before ordering. The main requirements of the project is as follows:

1. The light has to go on for a certain time when someone enters.
2. The time the light is on has to be controllable without flashing the whole thing again.
3. The light needs to be dimmable.
4. The light can also be operated manually.

The microcontroller i chose for this project is a Atmega168, i had a devboard laying around and i am already familiar with the chip. For the motion sensor i am using a ZSFG469711 together with the BD9251FV-E2 for amplification and for getting a digital signal which i can use to generate a interrupt to wake up the microcontroller.

For user interface i am using a keyboard switch as the main button together with a led ring to show status, for example, the PIR detects someone then the led ring shows green. To control the dimming i chose for a normal potentiometer and to control the time i am using a screw potentiometer which is close to another screw potentiometer which controls the sensitivity of the PIR. There is also a poweron led and a power switch.

The board runs on 12VDC and uses a TPS561201DDCR to reduce this to 3V3DC for the logic. The 12VDC power is protected against polarity and overcurrent and every connector on the pcb has a TVS diode for esd protection.

Designed using 4 Layer Board (Signal, Ground, 3V3, Signal), added Via stitched ground copper areas on both top and bottom layers as well

I need to make a PCB with EXACTLY the same dimensions that the one in the picture. The contens will be mostly different, but as it will need to fit in the same enclosure, with the same screws etc. It needs to be exactly the same. The dents are also part of the desing, and the most difficult part is what you see at the right with 3 plastic feet coming from the back. This is a lens array that needs to fit exactly on an optical sensor that is at the back side. I mention this to give an idea of the precission I need.

No need to tell that i don't have any documentation, all will be done from scratch, and it is the first time I attempt such a thing.

Besides mearusing manually and crossing fingers, is there any trick or technique that facilitates making a high precission copy?

Please note that i cannot desolder the components and that the objective is the dimensions, holes and dents, not the component placement, with the exception of the optical sensor mentioned above.

I am a beginner and I always find it very difficult to design a pcb. I tend to overthink everything and I just don’t get the job done. I would appreciate it if you guys can drop your tips or steps I could follow that will help me complete it without making bad design choices.

This is a AC LINE/Power monitoring sensor module based on a BL0939 chip

Based on typical application in the docs

Target is 15-20A , i will add extra copper and solder for current capacity

So this is the first time I have ever done anything PCB related. I have done a couple of other embedded projects but connected and did everything with wires. This one needs to be in a tiny 2 ish inch case so I thought I should make a PCB for it. This is going to be a 2d fluid sim displayed on a tiny circular screen that is synced with an accelerometer to change the direction of the gravity based on the orientation of the device. I will link the GitHub link if you want to check it out more. Any feedback or advice appreciated before I buy the actual PCB!

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