PCB Design Guidelines to Minimize RF Transmissions

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 writes on Hackaday:

PCB Design Guidelines to Minimize RF Transmissions

There are certain design guidelines for PCBs that don’t make a lot of sense, and practices that seem excessive and unnecessary. Often these are motivated by the black magic that is RF transmission. This is either an unfortunate and unintended consequence of electronic circuits, or a magical and useful feature of them, and a lot of design time goes into reducing or removing these effects or tuning them.

You’re wondering how important this is for your projects and whether you should worry about unintentional radiated emissions [..]

Another good guide is Michael Ossmann’s simple RF design rules:

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PCB Design Guidelines to Minimize RF Transmissions

SKiDL: Script Your Circuits in Python

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SKiDL: Script Your Circuits in Python

SKiDL is very, very cool. It’s a bit of Python code that outputs a circuit netlist for KiCAD. Why is this cool? If you design a PCB in KiCAD, you go through three steps: draw the schematic, assign footprints to the symbolic parts, and then place them. The netlist ties all of these phases together […]

The source code is available on GitHub:

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SKiDL: Script Your Circuits in Python

Friday Hack Chat: KiCad with Wayne Stambaugh

KiCad is the premiere open source electronics design automation suite. It’s used by professionals and amateurs alike to design circuits and layout out printed circuit boards. In recent years we’ve seen some incredible features added to KiCad like an improved 3D viewer and push-and-shove routing. This Friday at 10 am PST, join in a Hack…

via Friday Hack Chat: KiCad EDA Suite with Wayne Stambaugh — Hackaday

Friday Hack Chat: KiCad with Wayne Stambaugh

KiCad 4.0.5 Stable Release

kicad_logo_newThe KiCad project recently announced a new stable release:

KiCad 4.0.5 Stable Release

The 4.0.5 stable version contains critical bug fixes and version string improvements since the last release. The stable release version 4.0.5 is made from the stable 4.0 branch with bug fixes cherry picked from the development branch of KiCad.

KiCad binaries for Windows, OS X, and several GNU/Linux distributions can be found on the download page:

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Please note that KiCad board files (.kicad_pcb) can be uploaded directly to our website:

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Wondering who is involved in the development of KiCad?  Project leader Wayne Stambaugh presented at FOSDEM last year about the past, present, and future of the KiCad project:

Wayne also presented at FOSDEM 2016 back in March, but the audio and video quality is worse than the 2015 video.

KiCad 4.0.5 Stable Release

Creating A PCB In Everything: KiCad, Part 2

This is the continuation of a series where I create a PCB in every software suite imaginable. Last week, I took a look at KiCad, made the schematic representation for a component, and made a schematic for the standard reference PCB I’ve been using for these tutorials. Now it’s time to take that schematic, assign…

via Creating A PCB In Everything: KiCad, Part 2 — Hackaday

Creating A PCB In Everything: KiCad, Part 2