Collection of templates?

Is there a place with a bunch of templates, example schematics, etc., all collected together? Like, ideally, a hundred+ project snippets - microcontrollers with the power circuitry already added, sensors with the filtering capacitors or w/e already applied, and so forth. Kinda like the built in templates, maybe, but more of them and of wider varieties, and kinda like the “made with kicad” list, but with simpler and partial projects, that you could lego together into a full design. At least some kind of “come post your project here!” topic?

The internet?

Sorry, I couldn’t resist. Welcome to the forum, anyway @Erhannis :slightly_smiling_face:

Maybe others will shed more light on your subject.

Besides templates you should also look into re-useable schematic sheets. And perhaps also re-useabel PCB parts.

I made a ‘general schematics’ schematic. And it exists out of several loose sheets. There is no PCB design.

Typically most (not all) of my projects use an atmega328, if we look at that schematic you see the neccessary parts. uController, crystal, one LED, a program connector and a switch attached to A7 (used as config pin)

If I start a new project, I can simply insert this schematic. All components have footprints and vendor ID numbers for SMT assembly.

Depending on what I build, I may also use a usb connector with ch340 and an LDO. I have sheets for these as well

For some of these sheets, you may (I haven’t done this part yet) also want to partially place components and do the routing. If you use buck converter alot, you don’t want to redesign that same thing. It is a relative complex circuit where component places, vias and tracks are all critical. I also adjusted pad properties n such. The general idea is that you copy past the scematic sheet to your new project and than also ‘special’ copy the PCB components to your new PCB. It can be somewhat tricky to keep the annonations correct. It is easy to screw this up if you don’t pay attention.

Back to real templates.

You could for instance make a schematic with atmega, LDO, rectifier (or) DC jack, USB connector and ICSP connector for booloader burning/programming. Or whatever you need for your projects.

Than you can also make a board design with those components. You should make it so like that is compatible with most of your projects. You can also add a connector, route it to your IO pins and than delete the connector. This will allow your PCB to be routed more easily.

I have one such an example. I made several modelrailway decoders. As I did not want to redesign/re-route the exact same things for all 6-7 decoders. I made one such a template.


Than it is is just a case of copying and renaming your project folder and finish it. The above design is used in combination with mosfets, servos, relays, current sense circuitry, LEDs, you name it.

Hope it helps :coffee: ,

Bas

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Not that I’m aware of. It would be a labour of love with no return except maybe some satisfaction for someone keen on publicising Made with KiCad. And after a while lone curators get tired of the work.

Next best thing is to do your own search.

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Yeah, that’s the kind of thing I was hoping for - though ideally with many people’s contributions, haha. Even yours alone looks useful, though - is it posted somewhere? Github or something?

@retiredfeline Well, open source software IS usually a labor of love with no return - but sometimes people still do it, haha. If I make many circuit designs, they’ll probably end up on my github. Erhannis · GitHub And while github would work, and maybe would be the ideal place for the repos themselves, I’m imagining a system like pub.dev or crates.io, where you can specifically search for kicad “dependencies” to pull into your project (or post your own), snippets of schematic/pcb of preconfigured components, and optionally go look at the github repo. (It sounds like “schematic sheets” are the way you add dependency-equivalents to your projects?)

Yes I have a github.

Oh perhaps worth mentioning. One of the sheets is this one. I named it ‘basic components’

This particular sheet was solely used for JLCPCB assembly. About 90% of the components have proper vendor ID numbers. And they are mostly basic components.

I had to open a 2nd instance of kicad and Copy past these things. Though it works, it started to feel cumbersom so I slowly started to expand me symbol libraries. I now have 2 libs for 0603 and 0805 resistors with most used values. And I intend to phase this sheet out entirely. Everything for the workflow :muscle: .

Regards,

Bas

Designing electronics is more than sticking pieces of schematics and layouts together though. Except for very simple circuits, the adaptation takes a lot of effort. Projects could be made different KiCad versions, parts become unavailable, sometimes the author isn’t contactable for explanations, and so many other barriers. Github has Topics tags for projects, perhaps a start could be to encourage projects to tag them with KiCad, but even that is a big effort given that many projects are abandonware (“here I made it, help yourself to what you want”).

Anyway good luck with your curation efforts.

@bask185 Ah, neat; thanks. I note that some footprints are in a “custom_kicad_lib_sk”, and I don’t see it in your github - is that available somewhere?

@retiredfeline I mean, most of your objections apply to software, too, but we make do. And thanks - though I’m not really after curation, so much as a giant garbage dump of projects, only vaguely or automatically moderated if at all, that may occasionally have some useful bits. …Like pub.dev or crates.io :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

Software is far more standardised. There are various platforms: Windows, Mac, Linux, Arduino, etc. There are languages in common use: C/C++, Python, etc. Circuit boards are much more bespoke; just look at the number of people asking about a part that is still only known to a few. Then there is a bewildering of choices for packaging, alternate sources, and so forth. This is part of the reason many designers pick a standard embedded platform and then sculpt the product using firmware.

No sorry, that one happened to be in my dropbox folder. This auto syncs my custom libs for all computers. Stil organizing that, but I think that work wont ever be finished :joy:

One of things that bug me on the default footprints and this apply to all of them. The default silk texts are 2x bigger than I like. I always use half the size. So nowadays I also copy past footprints just to get the silk text smaller. Otherwise I have to do dumb click click work every time I add a component to my PCB layout. (we really need a functionality to let default thingies appear with smaller texts)

I cannot really recal why these symbols need a custom footprint. The items in question can just make use of the default footprints. I do remember that the switch’s default footprint had a wrong 3D model, so that one i copied to my cusom lib. It was stupid reallly because Kicad’s default libs do have the correct 3d model for that footprint. The link was just… wrong.

I prefer the more common tactiles, but this one is cheaper :smiley:

Also my atmega thing has a 2x3 ICSP connector but it has 1.27mm pitch. I bought a pogopin clamp in the same size for programming. You might wanna change that to your own liking.

Regards,

Bas

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