Well, it’s happened. My first PCBs have arrived. Now it’s just a matter of summoning the courage to solder on the parts and see if it works. This is the board I designed as part of my Eagle vs KiCad series. It breaks out a Centronics-compatible DB25 socket, with the data lines being driven by a shift register. There’s a… Read more »
[Eagle vs KiCad part 10] This is going to be a fairly short post because most of what I have to say can be summed up with: Eagle’s board layout program works very well and I had very few problems. It also offered very few features I wanted that KiCad didn’t. To create a board that will sync with your schematic… Read more »
[Eagle vs KiCad part 9] Once you’ve finished your schematic, creating a board in KiCad involves a number of steps. First, while still in Eeschema, you need to ensure all your components are ‘annotated’. When you drop a component in the schematic, it will be shown with an identifier plus question mark – for example, an IC might have the label… Read more »
[Eagle vs KiCad part 8] So, as I mentioned in the previous post, I’ve decided to change direction slightly. Rather than continuing with the HexMonitor project to a completed and fabbed board, I’m going with a slightly simpler project. The reasons are two-fold: first, the HexMonitor board is sufficiently complex that I figured it had no chance of working, this being… Read more »
[Eagle vs KiCad part 7] Right, so all the parts for my HexMonitor board are on the schematic, including the ones I created myself. Now it’s time to hook them up into an actual circuit. This is the easy bit, right?
[Eagle vs KiCad part 6] In the last post, I managed to get most of the parts I needed on to the schematic in KiCad. There were some problems, though.
[Eagle vs KiCad part 5] Having got as far as a complete schematic for my HexMonitor project with Eagle, it’s time to try the same thing with KiCad. And just as I did with Eagle, my plan is to design my HexMonitor project that takes signals from one eight-bit and one 16-bit bus and display their values on a four-digit, seven-segment… Read more »
[Eagle vs KiCad part 3] In the last post, I’d got as far as putting all the parts for my HexMonitor project into the schematic, albeit without actually connecting them. There was a good reason for that: while I (somewhat surprisingly) found the connector part I needed in Eagle’s default libraries, it wasn’t labelled the way I wanted. This was… Read more »
[Eagle vs KiCad part 2] Okay, so it’s time to start on the road of deciding whether I want to design PCBs in Eagle or KiCad. I’ve already talked about this a little, but here’s where I’m at. My natural inclination is towards KiCad. It’s open and it has none of the restrictions of the free version of Eagle (and… Read more »
[Eagle vs KiCad part 1] There’s a tough decision awaiting anyone who, like me, is about to get into designing their own printed circuit boards (PCBs) – what software to use. An Electronic Design Automation (EDA) package is pretty much essential for any serious PCB work, and quite a lot of non-serious work too (which is where I come in)…. Read more »