I was wondering if anyone here knows of a good forum where one could get help or possibly just a cursory look over / opinion on basic designs (so basic that most of you would probably laugh at them). I know this forum is supposed to be about KiCAD, so I don’t feel it is appropriate to ask these sort of things here. I am a member on Stack Exchange electrical engineering forum, but I am just getting started doing this type of stuff and the users over there tend to get annoyed or ignore your question if they feel it is below a certain level.
I’m not asking for anyone to do an indepth analysis or a complete design review, just make sure I’m on the right track before I go designing a board or boards and building stuff. I fully expect to waste some money and let the magic smoke out of some components my first few times out, but if someone were to catch some obvious simple beginner mistakes before I got to that point it would be good. LOL
So far, everyone here seems very helpful and I thought maybe someone could point me in the right direction.
Thanks!
Sections of board layouts get posted in this Forum on a fairly regular basis. Folks DO get a little annoyed if it’s an indefinite, open-end, request such as “What do you think of my board layout?”. Much better to have a more specific topic of concern - “Is this trace routed well, or should it use another route?”. or “How can I avoid splitting this ground plane?”, or “Can you suggest a way to get better heatsinking for this part?”, etc.
If your questions are more in the realm of CIRCUIT design, rather than how to implement that circuit on a PC board, you may be asked to take the question elsewhere (though I probably won’t be the one asking). There used to be a link at the top of the Forum page to a discussion group on basic electronics - perhaps somebody remembers the site and can re-post the link.