If you want to reverse engineer a PC board, you could do worse than X-ray it. But thanks to [Philip Giacalone], you could just take a photo, load it into PCB Tracer, and annotate the images. You can see a few of a series of videos about the system below. The tracer runs in your […]
Getting PCBs made is often the key step in taking a dodgy lab experiment and turning it into a functional piece of equipment. However, it can be tedious to wait for PCBs to ship, and that can really slow down the iterative development process. If you’ve got a 3D printer, though, there’s a neat way […]
In a recent video [QWZ Labs] demonstrates an interesting technique to use 3D printing to make creating custom PCBs rather straightforward even if all you have is a 3D printer and a roll of copper tape. The PCB itself is designed as usual in KiCad or equivalent EDA program, after which it is exported as […]
Ever think about all the moving parts involving a big KiCad project going into production? You need to provide manufacturer documentation, assembly instructions and renders for them to reference, every output file they could want, and all of it has to always stay up to date. [Vincent Nguyen] has a software pipeline to create all […]
A year ago, I’ve design reviewed an MCU module for CAN hacking, called TinySparrow. Modules are plenty cool, and even more so when they’re intended for remaking car ECUs. For a while now, every car has heavily depended on a computer to control the operation of everything inside it – the engine and its infrastructure, […]
In the desktop 3D printing world, we’re fortunate to have multiple online repositories of models that anyone can load up on their machine. Looking to create a similar experience but for electronic projects, [Mike Ayles] created CircuitSnips — a searchable database of ready-to-use KiCad schematics available under open source licenses. Looking for reference designs for […]
As the saying goes: if it has a processor and a display, it can run DOOM. The corollary here is that if some software displays things, someone will figure out a way to make it render the iconic shooter. Case in point KiDoom by [Mike Ayles], which happily renders DOOM in KiCad at a sedate […]
You know those old cliche that the younger generations have begun to cynically despise: “follow your dreams!” “You can be anything you put your mind to!” — well, perhaps they are true on occasion. For instance when [rctestflight] had PCBs that dreamed of becoming a hydrofoil, he found a way to make that dream come […]
[Andrew Greenberg] has some specific ideas for how open-source hardware hackers could do a better job with their KiCad schematics. In his work with students at Portland State University, [Andrew] finds his students both reading and creating KiCad schematics, and often these schematics leave a little to be desired. To help improve the situation he’s […]
A PCB business card is a great way for electrical engineers to impress employers with their design skills, but the software they run can be just as impressive as the card itself. As a programmer with an interest in embedded machine learning, [Dave McKinnon] wanted a card that showcased his skills, so he designed one that […]