Hi everyone! I recently started designing my first PCB for a little macropad and was hoping if someone with a bit more experience could double check my files to see if everything looks good before I send it off to get manufactured. I uploaded the project to the link below. Sorry if I have made any silly mistakes and thank you in advanced!
A few things come to mind at a first glance.
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The ground planes on the both sides of the board are quite badly cut up by the large groups of long traces. At a minimum, I would use a good amount of vias spread out with some thought, to stich the front and rear ground planes together, to bridge the gaps created by the traces.
The idea is to make the circuit less sensitive to incoming electromagnetic fields as well as reduce the em fields transmitted by them, especially by the fast risetimes of the signals sent out to the keys for scanning the keypad. In other words, prevent that the long traces act as antennas. -
Make the 3V3 trace wider than the current 0,35mm. There is space, so take for example 1mm and neck it down at the pad of the connector “Board1”.
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Decoupling capacitors on the +3V3. Probably there are some on the raspberry pi pico already, so maybe it is not needed in this particular case. But in general it is a good idea.
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Debouncing / RF immunization by RC network on the incoming lines from the keys? Similar to what you have already implemented on the rotary encoder. This might also make the circuit slightly less sensitive to static electricity.
Hope you got some ideas. There is a lot to learn and consider when it comes to making an electronic circuit robust to the electrical environment, as well as electromagnetically compliant. There have been some good tips on the forum every now and then.
Thank you very much for the info and taking the time to check my board! I will definitely be updating the design and likely coming back with a revision. Thanks again!
So I had a go at adjusting my board. I added a bunch of vias spread around the board and increased the thickness of the 3V3 trace to 1mm. I haven’t added any debouncing to the incoming lines for the keys as I wasn’t really sure on how to implement this. Added it to the link below. Can you see anything obvious that would stop this PCB from working? Really appreciate the help!
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