I don't like this tutorial. It purports to teach you "what everything on the PCB fundamentally does, and what every single component on your PCB is actually for!" but it gets the reasoning for a lot of stuff wrong, sometimes badly wrong. I think every single instance of a component with a numerical value picks the value with a misleading or even completely wrong justification. Even if the tutorial gets to an OK schematic in the end, it shouldn't be teaching shoddy reasoning.
(And the author doesn't seem to understand decoupling capacitors, but most people don't understand decoupling capacitors, including most datasheet authors, so that doesn't surprise me.)
Also, KiCad's "solutions" for BOMs are hilariously, absurdly terrible. But that helps me earn a living, so I can't complain too much....
This reads like the author just wanted to format his ChatGPT-aided build record in a lecture manual format, rather than being an attempt at such material.
I agree with the sibling comment that "How to decide what you need on your devboard" is the tutorial that would be nice to see. This article is trying to do too many things at once (design a dev board, baby's first schematic, baby's first PCB, baby's first JLCPCB order,...) and that's really the only one that's novel. The rest of it is standard EE stuff that's covered in a lot of places (with varying degrees of success).
As for decoupling, I've written about how to do it in various places scattered across the internet. I should really collect it all in one place one of these days.
At no point in the entire design process within KiCad does this design ever get part numbers assigned for its resistors or capacitors (to pick one thing). That's not acceptable for professional work. A Bill of Materials ABSOLUTELY MUST DESCRIBE THE MATERIALS used in the assembly of the PCBA. Internal part numbers are perfectly acceptable: assigning a generic RES-0402-10k or WIDGETCO-PN987654321 or whatever would be OK by me. KiCAD does not really do this, as evidenced by how this design reaches "design complete" without being... complete.
EVERYTHING MUST HAVE AN ORDERABLE PART NUMBER OR INTERNAL PART NUMBER.
But the resistors are the easy parts. SMD thick film resistors are basically all interchangeable. Things like the ceramic capacitors (MLCCs) cannot be substituted for each other because they all bloody well behave differently so good luck getting the same behavior if you randomly pick a capacitor vendor on LCSC each time you build boards! That's how EEs get fired, and deserve it.
When I generate a build package in Altium, it has complete lists of every part in the design, its MPN, at least one supplier to purchase it, and the SPN for that MPN. (Sometimes internal parts don't have suppliers assigned, but then they're tracked elsewhere in the project or company organization.) There are also assigned alternates in many cases, though they are typically inadequate. Larger projects should use entirely internal part numbering, but that's a real headwind for smaller stuff. All of this comes from a single master part database, plus a project part database, and never gets touched by hand after a library entry's birth.
KiCad is so crap at doing this that last month a client literally paid me thousands of dollars to fix up a garbage KiCad design package that didn't have this information properly stored. There are several add-ins for KiCad that claim to do BOMs better... but it's not standard, so if you don't document what you did and how (which you do not have to do in real CAD software, because it is built in and the CAD vendor documentation plus the years of built-up lore will cover you!) it may as well not exist. Certainly it didn't exist in any sort of usable form for this project.
Not sure if it was due to higher load from HN or my IP location, but your website is inaccessible to me right now: "This deployment is temporarily paused."
I thought this article would first start with the most essential question: "How to decide what you need on your devboard".
Without that critical piece of design work, you may as well call this "How to build a Raspberry Pi Nano from scratch". Which, to be fair, is also a good article to write.
But step 1 for really building a dev board is answering the question, "What do I need from this that I can't get from a $5 Amazon purchase?"
Honestly my problem is that all my designs turn into devboards since I always have a kind of "FOMO" of not breaking something out and then needing it later to bodge things... and then I'm left with a crowded board where I don't even use two thirds of things...
Test pads are great for these anxious breakouts. I usually drop tons and tons of test pads on the back of my boards as it's a very dense and unobtrusive way to expose traces that you probably don't need.
I don't like this tutorial. It purports to teach you "what everything on the PCB fundamentally does, and what every single component on your PCB is actually for!" but it gets the reasoning for a lot of stuff wrong, sometimes badly wrong. I think every single instance of a component with a numerical value picks the value with a misleading or even completely wrong justification. Even if the tutorial gets to an OK schematic in the end, it shouldn't be teaching shoddy reasoning.
(And the author doesn't seem to understand decoupling capacitors, but most people don't understand decoupling capacitors, including most datasheet authors, so that doesn't surprise me.)
Also, KiCad's "solutions" for BOMs are hilariously, absurdly terrible. But that helps me earn a living, so I can't complain too much....
This reads like the author just wanted to format his ChatGPT-aided build record in a lecture manual format, rather than being an attempt at such material.
Do you have a tutorial that you like?
I agree with the sibling comment that "How to decide what you need on your devboard" is the tutorial that would be nice to see. This article is trying to do too many things at once (design a dev board, baby's first schematic, baby's first PCB, baby's first JLCPCB order,...) and that's really the only one that's novel. The rest of it is standard EE stuff that's covered in a lot of places (with varying degrees of success).
As for decoupling, I've written about how to do it in various places scattered across the internet. I should really collect it all in one place one of these days.
Can you clarify the issues with KiCad's BOM flow?
What BOM flow? It doesn't bloody well have any!
At no point in the entire design process within KiCad does this design ever get part numbers assigned for its resistors or capacitors (to pick one thing). That's not acceptable for professional work. A Bill of Materials ABSOLUTELY MUST DESCRIBE THE MATERIALS used in the assembly of the PCBA. Internal part numbers are perfectly acceptable: assigning a generic RES-0402-10k or WIDGETCO-PN987654321 or whatever would be OK by me. KiCAD does not really do this, as evidenced by how this design reaches "design complete" without being... complete.
EVERYTHING MUST HAVE AN ORDERABLE PART NUMBER OR INTERNAL PART NUMBER.
But the resistors are the easy parts. SMD thick film resistors are basically all interchangeable. Things like the ceramic capacitors (MLCCs) cannot be substituted for each other because they all bloody well behave differently so good luck getting the same behavior if you randomly pick a capacitor vendor on LCSC each time you build boards! That's how EEs get fired, and deserve it.
When I generate a build package in Altium, it has complete lists of every part in the design, its MPN, at least one supplier to purchase it, and the SPN for that MPN. (Sometimes internal parts don't have suppliers assigned, but then they're tracked elsewhere in the project or company organization.) There are also assigned alternates in many cases, though they are typically inadequate. Larger projects should use entirely internal part numbering, but that's a real headwind for smaller stuff. All of this comes from a single master part database, plus a project part database, and never gets touched by hand after a library entry's birth.
KiCad is so crap at doing this that last month a client literally paid me thousands of dollars to fix up a garbage KiCad design package that didn't have this information properly stored. There are several add-ins for KiCad that claim to do BOMs better... but it's not standard, so if you don't document what you did and how (which you do not have to do in real CAD software, because it is built in and the CAD vendor documentation plus the years of built-up lore will cover you!) it may as well not exist. Certainly it didn't exist in any sort of usable form for this project.
While the deployment is down you can read it on web.archive.org https://web.archive.org/web/20251107235749/https://kaipereir...
Not sure if it was due to higher load from HN or my IP location, but your website is inaccessible to me right now: "This deployment is temporarily paused."
For me also it is unreachable
"This deployment is temporarily paused"
I thought this article would first start with the most essential question: "How to decide what you need on your devboard".
Without that critical piece of design work, you may as well call this "How to build a Raspberry Pi Nano from scratch". Which, to be fair, is also a good article to write.
But step 1 for really building a dev board is answering the question, "What do I need from this that I can't get from a $5 Amazon purchase?"
> What do I need from this that I can't get from a $5 Amazon purchase?
A month of enjoyment tinkering on a hobby just for the hell of it.
I just go the other way - dev boards are so cheap you can just take a scalpel to them and take off the bits you don’t want.
Dang, I wanna read this but the site seems down
https://web.archive.org/web/20251107235749/https://kaipereir...
That now yields a "429 Too Many Requests"
I didn't know HN could bury a site like that.
Edit: I had to turn off my VPN and now it works.
“ This is how are schematic will look when done the tutorial”
Well, that bodes well for the rest of the article..
This is a really excellent tutorial, thank you for making it.
Honestly my problem is that all my designs turn into devboards since I always have a kind of "FOMO" of not breaking something out and then needing it later to bodge things... and then I'm left with a crowded board where I don't even use two thirds of things...
Test pads are great for these anxious breakouts. I usually drop tons and tons of test pads on the back of my boards as it's a very dense and unobtrusive way to expose traces that you probably don't need.
I‘m sure you've already considered that, but what about iterating your design, e.g. redesigning the board if you need more outputs?
Crosspost to r/embedded if you haven’t. See you there.