I’m fairly new to Kicad and I have been watching a ton of videos on the program, however, before I begin to convert my breadboard circuit to Kicad, I want to know if I am doing more work than I need to.
My breadboard circuit uses the following Adafruit components, all of which have .sch and .brd files:
TRRS 3.5MM audio jack
USBC micro Lipo
MAX9814 ACG Mic
150 mAH lipo battery
P103 3 Terminal pin
In preparation to convert breakout boards to a custom PCB should I import all the .sch files all to one schematic and begin connecting wires or should I do it from scratch and use the .sch files as a point of reference for rebuilding the circuits?
Only if this is what you want to do.
Another possibility is to treat each Adafruit subsystems as a part, and prepare a schematic that connect the modules.
This way the schematic and PCB is simpler to design; the downside is that probably you will have to prepare the schematic symbols and pcb footprints by yourself (that anyway is a fundamental skill to acquire).
Ideally, I’d like to make the PCB as small as possible. This would allow me to create a rather small housing that can fit all the electronics in one unit.
The area where I have been struggling to understand is if I import the schematics or paste them into my main .sch file can I connect them together then manually match the footprints according to the datasheet?
yes, you can also remove the J1, JP1,… connectors from the original boards and connect the signals directly with a net. Then you can associate the footprints to the schematic symbols (Probably you will have to redo the annotation of the schematic before being able to synchronize the pcb.)
In your shoes I would just create new symbols and footprints using the schematics of the modules as a guide. Otherwise you end up culling unnecessary detail from the schematics and resolving duplicated identifiers which aren’t needed anyway. Essentially make each module a giant part. How much area you need depend on how cleverly you pack the modules. If you don’t mind thick you mgith even be able to mount them on the back of the mother board. Or even vertical if there is only one row of connectors.
Some components like the battery may be off-board and connected via a connector. You could elect to make the footprint that of the connector. Or assign them the off-board attribute. Or other ways of dealing with them.
I note you talk of .sch and .brd files. KiCad files are .kicad_sch and .kicad_pcb. It sounds like you have Eagle schematics which would need importing into KiCad, another step, if you want to do it that way.
It’s just a simple circuit wit a few parts. Converting the eagle projects, fixing RefDes, removing connectors, etc, is probably more work then just re-entering it from scratch. I also noticed KiCad does have a symbol for that microphone amplifier IC in it’s default libraries. I also recommend to have a look at the datasheet of that IC. Maybe you want to make some modifications to the surrounding circuitry to better suit your own application.
Hi guys thank you for your feedback and suggestions. After doing some additional learning and following some additional tutorials I believe I have successfully developed my first custom pcb board.
After completing I’ve been running into some design errors and warnings but want to know if I should bypass them or resolve them before I send it out to be manufactured.
You can get a text report from the rule checkers and post as quoted text which will be much easier for others to read compared to screenshots which might also cut stuff off at the bottom.
First round reaction is you can get rid of the many pin type conflicts in ERC by assigning correct pin types to U1. Looks like you got that symbol from some Internet library.
