I recently discovered the RPi PicoDVI Sock, which fits onto a Raspberry Pi Pico and provides video out. Longer ago, I discovered that a 0.8mm thickness PCB fits nicely inside an HDMI male connector.
Therefore I decided to lay out a new footprint for the HDMI female PCB connector. I had to make two, one for each side of the PCB - I guess this is normal.
This is my first time using KiCad, and I’m finding it a challenge to get a non-rectangular layout in the Edge Cuts layer. The HDMI connector part needs to stick out from the rest of the PCB, and be exactly 10.77mm wide. When I draw lines on the Edge Cuts layer as a bounding box for the desired PCB area, the 3D view just shows a rectangle. It also shows the error “Board outline is missing or malformed.”
Here’s the work-in-progress project.
hdmi dimensions.xlsx is the measurements I took with some calipers.
hdmiFemale_1.kicad_mod and hdmiFemale_2.kicad_mod, and hdmiFemale_Library.kicad_sym are the footprint and symbol.
I hope this can be the start of many more thin-DVI projects! There are a large number of USB PCB edge connectors, so I’d like to see the same happening for DVI (it’s not HDMI-compatible so we should be careful with naming).
. . . and you are going to have issues if you try and use edge cuts from within a footprint . . . how are you going to have non-overlapping Edge Cut paths in that instance ?
Longish time ago KiCad didn’t support creating Edge.Cuts in the Footprint Editor. Support was added because people wanted it. However, one must know what they are doing. For example, if a part of the board edge is represented in a footprint, it’s impossible to use a simple rectangle for the board outline in the PCB editor. You have to use lines and attach the line ends to the footprint’s edge line ends to form a closed continuous non-overlapping shape.
Footprints are allowed to have pads on the bottom layer too, you can put pads on both top and bottom in the same footprint. This is a good idea to make sure they are aligned.
I ran DRC as eelik suggested, and got quite a lot of errors. There’s a “Board edge clearance violation” that seems to be related to this footprint. Is it possible to have the pad extend to the board edge?
Thanks again for helping with my newbie questions!
Yes, but No… Edge-Cards generally have Chamfered edges to avoid the Pads from damage/lifting. The Pad are set-back as needed. BEST to check with PCB fab house as they have requirements for this.
You’ve gotten this far a may not want to view this (my Video). If viewing it, note that it was done before Kicad’s Footprint Editor had Edge-Cut ability (thus, I edited the .MOD file at 5 minutes into video. Afterwards, back into PCB and completing the work…
Thank you RaptorUK and BlackCoffee! That was just what I needed to know. Moving the pads back to satisfy the DRC, then changing to B.Paste and B.Mask made the pads appear as I was expecting.
I saw a “>” shaped notch on two of the pins, but that appears to be connecting GND to GND so it shouldn’t be an issue.
I’d like to upload the design for a review, but the forums won’t let me post links to iCloud any more, and new users can’t add attachments. If there’s any other screenshots you’d like for double-checking purposes, I’m happy to send those.
Thank you again for your advice in this process, it’s been enjoyable to begin a new hobby of PCB design!
I chose a 0.8mm thickness PCB from PCBWay, and with the pad thickness, it came to 0.84mm. That’s close enough to the 0.9mm needed to make a decent connection.
