Apollo-era PCB Reverse Engineering To KiCad

November 25, 2024 by Chris Lott 24 Comments

Earlier this year [Skyhawkson] got ahold of an Apollo-era printed circuit board which he believes was used in a NASA test stand. He took high quality photos of both sides of the board and superimposed them atop each other. After digging into a few obsolete parts from the 1960s, he was able to trace out the connections. I ran across the project just after making schematics for the Supercon badge and petal matrix. Being on a roll, I decided to take [Skyhawkson]’s work as a starting point and create KiCad schematics. Hopefully we can figure out what this circuit board does along the way.

The board is pretty simple:

approximately 6.5 x 4.5 inches
22 circuit edge connector 0.156 in pitch
31 ea two-terminal parts ( resistors, diodes )
3 ea trimmer potentiometers
7 ea transistors
parts arranged in 4 columns

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Supercon 2024 SAO Petal KiCad Redrawing Project

November 19, 2024 by Chris Lott 5 Comments

Last week I completed the SAO flower badge redrawing task, making a complete KiCad project. Most of the SAO petals are already released as KiCad projects, except for the Petal Matrix. The design features 56 LEDs arranged in eight spiral arms radiating from the center. What it does not feature are straight lines, right angles, nor parts placed on a regular grid.

Importing into KiCad

Circuit Notes for LEDs, Thanks to [spereinabox]

I followed the same procedures as the main flower badge with no major hiccups. This design didn’t have any released schematics, but backing out the circuits was straightforward. It also helped that user [sphereinabox] over on the Hackaday Discord server had rung out the LED matrix connections and gave me his notes.

Grep Those Positons

I first wanted to only read the data from the LEDs for analysis, and I didn’t need the full Kicad + Python scripting for that. Using grep on the PCB file, you get a text file that can be easily parsed to get the numbers. I confirmed that the LED placements were truly as irregular as they looked.

My biggest worry was how obtain and re-apply the positions and angles of the LEDs, given the irregular layout of the spiral arms. Just like the random angles of six SAO connector on the badge board, [Voja] doesn’t disappoint on this board, either. I fired up Python and used Matplotlib to get a visual perspective of the randomness of the placements, as one does. Due to the overall shape of the arms, there is a general trend to the numbers. But no obvious equation is discernable.

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Supercon 2024 Flower SAO Badge Redrawing In KiCad

October 31, 2024 by Chris Lott 12 Comments

Out of curiosity, I redrew the Supercon Vectorscope badge schematics in KiCad last year. As you might suspect, going from PCB to schematic is opposite to the normal design flow of KiCad and most other PCB design tools. As a result, the schematics and PCB of the Vectorscope project were not really linked. I decided to try it again this year, but with the added goal of making a complete KiCad project. As usual, [Voja] provided a well drawn schematic diagram in PDF and CorelDRAW formats, and a PCB design using Altium’s Circuit Maker format (CSPcbDoc file). And for reference, this year I’m using KiCad v8 versus v7 last year.

Importing into KiCad

This went smoothly. KiCad imports Altium files, as I discovered last year. Converting the graphic lines to traces was easier than before, since the graphical lines are deleted in the conversion process. There was a file organizational quirk, however. I made a new, empty project and imported the Circuit Maker PCB file. It wasn’t obvious at first, but the importing action didn’t make use the new project I had just made. Instead, it created a completely new project in the directory holding the imported Circuit Maker file. This caused a lot of head scratching when I was editing the symbol and footprint library table files, and couldn’t figure out why my edits weren’t being seen by KiCad. I’m not sure what the logic of this is, was an easy fix once you know what’s going on. I simply copied everything from the imported project and pasted it in my new, empty project. Continue reading “Supercon 2024 Flower SAO Badge Redrawing In KiCad” →

Supercon 2023: Thea Flowers Renders KiCad Projects On The Web

October 1, 2024 by Arya Voronova 8 Comments

Last year’s Supercon, we’ve had the pleasure of hosting Thea [Stargirl] Flowers, who told us about her KiCanvas project, with its trials, its tribulations, and its triumphs. KiCanvas brings interactive display of KiCad boards and schematics into your browser, letting you embed your PCB’s information right into your blog post or online documentation.

Give the KiCanvas plugin a URL to your KiCad file, and it will render your file in the browser, fully on the fly. There’s no .jpg to update and re-upload, no jobs to re-run each time you find a mistake and update your board – your files are always up to date, and your audience is always able to check it out without launching KiCad.

Images are an intuitive representation for schematics and PCB files, but they’re letting hackers down massively. Thea’s KiCanvas project is about making our KiCad projects all that more accessible to newcomers, and it’s succeeded – nowadays, you can encounter KiCanvas schematic embeds in the wild on various hackers’ blogs. The Typescript code didn’t write itself, and neither was it easy – she’s brought a fair few war stories to the DesignLab stage.

A hacker’s passion to share can move mountains. Thea’s task was a formidable one, too – KiCad is a monumental project with a decades-long history. There are quite respectable reasons for someone to move this particular mountain – helping you share your projects quickly but extensively, and letting people learn about your projects without breaking a sweat.

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Illustrated Kristina with an IBM Model M keyboard floating between her hands.

Keebin’ With Kristina: The One With The KiCad Plugin

August 8, 2024 by Kristina Panos 2 Comments

Image by [fata1err0r81] via reddit

The most striking feature of the Tenshi keyboard has to be those dual track pads. But then you notice that [fata1err0r81] managed to sneak in two extra thumb keys on the left, and that those are tilted for comfort and ease of actuation.

The name Tenshi means ‘angel’ in Japanese, and creator [fata1err0r81] says that the track pads are the halos. Each one slides on a cool 3D-printed track that’s shaped like a half dovetail joint, which you can see it closer in this picture.

Tenshi uses a pair of RP2040 Zeros as controllers and runs QMK firmware. The track pads are 40 mm each and come from Cirque. While the Cirques have been integrated into QMK, the pull request for ZMK has yet to be merged in. And about those angled keys — [fata1err0r81] says they tried risers, but the tilting feels like less effort. Makes total sense to me, but then again I’m used to a whole keyboard full of tilted keys.

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Screenshot of the GitHub Marketplace action listing, describing the extension

Giving Your KiCad PCB Repository Pretty Pictures

May 4, 2024 by Arya Voronova 25 Comments

Publishing your boards on GitHub or GitLab is a must, and leads to wonderful outcomes in the hacker world. On their own, however, your board files might have the repo look a bit barren; having a picture or two in the README is the best. Making them yourself takes time – what if you could have it happen automatically? Enter kicad-render, a GitHub and GitLab integration for rendering your KiCad projects by [linalinn].

This integration makes your board pictures, top and bottom view, generated on every push into the repo – just embed two image links into your README.md. This integration is made possible thanks to the new option in KiCad 8’s kicad-cli – board image generation, and [linalinn]’s code makes KiCad run on GitHub/GitLab servers.

For even more bling, you can enable an option to generate a GIF that rotates your board, in the style of that one [arturo182] demo – in fact, this integration’s GIF code was borrowed from that script! Got a repository with many boards in one? There’s an option you could make work for yourself, too.

All you need to do is to follow a couple of simple steps; [linalinn] has documented both the GitHub and GitLab integration. We’ve recently talked about KiCad integrations in more detail, if you’re wondering what else your repository could be doing!

Share Your Projects: KiCad Automations And Pretty Renders

March 11, 2024 by Arya Voronova 23 Comments

I have a pretty large GitHub repository, with all of my boards open-sourced there. Now, I’m finally facing the major problem it has – it can be uncomfortable for others to work with. I don’t store Gerber files in the repository because that will interfere with how Git functions – you’re supposed to only have source files in the repo. Yet, when someone needs Gerbers for my PCB, or a schematic PDF, or just to see how the board looks before they clone the entire repository, I often don’t have a good option for them.

In my experience as a hacker, being able to find others’ PCBs on GitHub is simply wonderful, but a PCB repository without a README feels barren, and a PCB README without pictures makes me sad. On the other hand, not having these files autogenerate is uncomfortable – updating a picture every time is a major drawback in particular.

Let’s take a look at some KiCad Git integrations, and see what they have to offer.

kicad_cli

We’ve mentioned kicad_cli back when KiCad 7 got released, and in the recently released KiCad 8, it’s only become more powerful. Before, it could do gerbers and schematic PDFs, but now, it can even do DRC checks – which is ideal if you want to add a hook for any pull requests you might encounter.

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