KiCAD

150 Articles

Hackaday Prize 2023: Circuit Scout Lends A Hand (Or Two) For Troubleshooting

August 11, 2023 by 13 Comments

Troubleshooting a circuit is easy, right? All you need is a couple of hands to hold the probes, another hand to twiddle the knobs, a pair of eyes to look at the schematic, another pair to look at the circuit board, and, for fancy work, X-ray vision to see through the board so you know what pads to probe. It’s child’s play!

In the real world, most of us don’t have all the extra parts needed to do the job right, which is where something like CircuitScout would come in mighty handy. [Fangzheng Liu] and [Thomas Juldo]’s design is a little like a small pick-and-place machine, except that instead of placing components, the dual gantries place probes on whatever test points you need to look at. The stepper-controlled gantries move independently over a fixture to hold the PCB in a known position so that the servo-controlled Z-axes can drive the probes down to the right place on the board.

As cool as the hardware is, the real treat is the software. A web-based GUI parses the PCB’s KiCAD files, allowing you to pick a test point on the schematic and have the machine move a probe to the right spot on the board. The video below shows CircuitScout moving probes from a Saleae logic analyzer around, which lets you both control the test setup and see the results without ever looking away from the screen.

CircuitScout seems like a brilliant idea that has a lot of potential both for ad hoc troubleshooting and for more formal production testing. It’s just exactly what we’re looking for in an entry for the Gearing Up round of the 2023 Hackaday Prize.

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Easyeda2KiCad: Never Draw A Footprint Again

August 8, 2023 by 38 Comments

What if I told you that you might never need to draw a new footprint again? Such is my friend’s impression of the tool that she’s shown me and I’m about to show you in turn, having used this tool for a few projects, I can’t really disagree!

We all know of the JLCPCB/LCSC/EasyEDA trio, and their integration makes a lot of sense. You’re expected to design your boards in EasyEDA, order the components on LCSC, and get the boards made by JLCPCB. It’s meant to be a one-stop shop, and as you might expect, there’s tight integration between all three. If there wasn’t, you’d be tempted to step outside of the ecosystem, after all.

But like many in this community, I use KiCad, and I don’t expect to move to a different PCB design suite — especially not a cloud one. Still, I enjoy using the JLCPCB and LCSC combination in the hobby PCB market as it stands now, and despite my KiCad affinity, it appears that EasyEDA can help me after all!

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Nail, Meet KiCad

July 24, 2023 by 25 Comments

You know the old saying. When all you have open is KiCad, everything looks like a PCB. That was certainly true for [Evan], who needed to replace a small part recently and turned to PCBs to get the job done.

The part in question was a sheered apart detent cam from a retractable cord reel. Glue and epoxy might have worked, and [Evan] was worried about how a 3D printed PLA part would have held up. The part is an extruded 2D shape, making PCBs a non-traditional but viable choice. Using the old scanner trick, he traced the outline in KiCad 7 (which adds image references). Then with the five boards stacked up, solid core wire, solder, and a propane torch worth of heat fused it. Ultimately, this machine’s tolerances are generous, so it worked wonderfully.

Was it the “right” tool for the job? Right or wrong, it is hard to argue that in terms of durability and ease per dollar, this doesn’t come out on top. PCB files are on GitHub if you have a 5020TF-4c retractable cord reel that needs a new cam. PCBs have a fun way of adopting different use cases like enclosures, but perhaps the idea of PCBs as a mechanical part could be applied elsewhere.

Importing EAGLE Projects Into KiCad 7, And How To Fix Them

July 1, 2023 by 10 Comments

Migrating a PCB design from one CAD software package to another is no one’s favorite task. It almost never works cleanly. Often there are missing schematic symbols, scrambled PCB footprints, and plenty of other problems. Thankfully [shabaz] shows how to import EAGLE projects into KiCad 7 and fix the most common problems one is likely to encounter in the process. Frankly, the information couldn’t come at a better time.

This is very timely now that EAGLE has gone the way of the dodo. CadSoft EAGLE used to be a big shot when it came to PCB design for small organizations or individual designers, but six years after being purchased by Autodesk they are no more. KiCad 7 is a staggeringly capable open-source software package containing some fantastic features for beginner and advanced designers alike.

Of course, these kinds of tutorials tend to be perishable because software changes over time. So if you’re staring down a migration from EAGLE to KiCad and could use some guidance, there’s no better time than the present. [shabaz]’s video showing the process is embedded below.

Thanks to [problemchild68] for the tip!

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Hackaday Links: April 16, 2023

April 16, 2023 by 25 Comments

The dystopian future you’ve been expecting is here now, at least if you live in New York City, which unveiled a trio of technology solutions to the city’s crime woes this week. Surprisingly, the least terrifying one is “DigiDog,” which seems to be more or less an off-the-shelf Spot robot from Boston Dynamics. DigiDog’s job is to de-escalate hostage negotiation situations, and unarmed though it may be, we suspect that the mission will fail spectacularly if either the hostage or hostage-taker has seen Black Mirror. Also likely to terrify the public is the totally-not-a-Dalek-looking K5 Autonomous Security Robot, which is apparently already wandering around Times Square using AI and other buzzwords to snitch on people. And finally, there’s StarChase, which is based on an AR-15 lower receiver and shoots GPS trackers that stick to cars so they can be tracked remotely. We’re not sure about that last one either; besides the fact that it looks like a grenade launcher, the GPS tracker isn’t exactly covert. Plus it’s only attached with adhesive, so it seems easy enough to pop it off the target vehicle and throw it in a sewer, or even attach it to another car.

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Kicad Autorouting Made Easy

April 14, 2023 by 23 Comments

One of the most laborious tasks in PCB layout is the routing. Autorouting isn’t always perfect, but it is nice to have the option, even if you only use it to get started and then hand-tune the resulting board. Unfortunately, recent versions of Kicad have dropped support for autorouting. You can, however, still use Freerouting and the video from [Mr. T] below shows you how to get started.

There are three ways to get the autorouting support. You can install Java and a plugin, you can isntall using a ZIP file, or you can simply export a Specctra DSN file and use Freerouting as a standalone program. Then you import the output DSN file, and you are done.

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Physics-Controlled Component Auto-Placer

March 9, 2023 by 9 Comments

[Jarrett] recently stumbled upon a class of drawing algorithms called force-directed graphs, which artificially apply forces to the elements. The final graph is then generated by applying the laws of physics and letting the system reach equilibrium. This can often result in a pleasing presentation of things like mind maps and other diagrams without having to hand-place everything. He realized that this approach almost mimics the way he places components when doing a PCB layout. Out of curiosity or intense boredom, we’re not sure which, he decided to implement this in a tool that interacts with KiCad ( see animated GIF below the break ).

He has to ignore certain nets such as power and ground rails, because they distort the result. This simulation treats the nets as springs, and the center of each footprint behaves a charged particle. [Jarrett] added a twist, literally, to the usual implementations — each net pulls on its pin, not the part center, and therefore the chips will both rotate and be pushed around as the system stabilizes.

The results are sometimes quite striking. Useful? Dubious, but maybe!

The project code is up on GitHub, but is very experimental and he is unlikely to carry it further. Among the missing features, the Python code must be tweaked for each different netlist files and other parameters, and there is no way to feed the result back into KiCad. But this is enough for [Jarrett], who only set out to see if the concept was possible. The code is available if anyone wants to try their hand at taking this to the next level.

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