4 ms·

Easyduino: Open Source PCB Devboards for KiCad

253 points by Hanqaqa 6mo ago

stevenpetryk 6mo ago
wow, I've been wanting a "PCB design system" like this for such a long time. I've always found it stupidly hard to just take an existing working board and tweak it.
- wpm 6mo ago
  Worst is when I have a full board and schematic, but its for some other EDA program. Importing EagleCAD shit into KiCAD is agonizing, endless tedium. It's not like I'm not grateful to have free and open-source designs (specifically I'm talking about Adafruit, I like them, but all they use is EagleCAD), but goddamnit why can't it just be easy for once :(
slicktux 6mo ago
This is a nice project that I will definitely be looking into for my projects!
precompute 6mo ago
Awesome.
lloydatkinson 6mo ago
Is the intention that you "fork" the PCB design and use it as a base/template for you own schematics/PCB design, or something else?
- junon 6mo ago
  I could imagine small companies that rely on these boards and that also have their fab and sourcing pipelines set up would be able to easier source these themselves. Just have to generate the Gerbers (fabrication output format most manus need) and then send it off as part of a larger order, etc. Especially if you're able to replace certain small/passive components with those you already have in bulk, it could be a potential cost cutting measure. Just a guess though. For my case, they'd be useful if I wanted to know how certain subcircuits are designed or laid out. Even for beginners, taking it into kicad, enabling the selection of only tracks and vias and deleting them all, then doing a full re-layout of the board as practice would be a cool project if you're wanting to learn.
- Mizza 6mo ago
  I've got some projects that use ADCs on Pi "Hats" that connect to controls, I could see a future version which integrates that ADCs and pots directly onto the board to get a slimmer profile. It's quite handy, I wonder what the unit cost is with assembly at JLCPCB.
- coryrc 6mo ago
  Yes to the first half, for the most part.
- throwup238 6mo ago
  Most electrical engineers use “reference designs” published by the IC manufacturers to design their PCBs, although any open source commercially available design can act as a reference. They essentially copy the schematics from the PDF (or import if file formats/converters allow), ripping out whatever they don’t need, then reroute the PCB using their layers. In some cases, when their PCB fab layer stack up is similar enough to the original board, they can go a step further and copy paste most of the PCB into their design so that any signal integrity work carries over. Realistically this is only really practical for low speed designs but still useful for a whole class of electronics. I don’t use KiCad but software like Altium support modular schematic sheets and PCB rooms so theoretically it can imported into that (since KiCad’s format is open source S-expr)
simojo 6mo ago
Recently, I made an Arduino UNO that I showed to have better switching characteristics than a commercial board. It was a great project to help me understand how seemingly inconsequential routing practices can lead to issues down the line. http://www.simonjjones.com/#/posts/golden-arduino http://www.simonjjones.com/#/posts/golden-arduino
- achr2 6mo ago
  I enjoyed your post - PCB routing is often an act of 'zen and the art of..' for me and I recently did a similar exercise for an esp32.
- bschwindHN 6mo ago
  You should be able to improve it further with a 4 layer board, as you can have the signal lines closer to their reference planes, and can more easily avoid signals crossing each other and breaking reference planes.
hathawsh 6mo ago
This is an amazing resource. It was difficult to appreciate what this resource was for until I tried to create my own boards based on an ESP32. It's not really difficult to build around ESP32, it's just that I don't know what I don't know. With starting points like these, I can start with a lot more confidence. Thank you!
- hattmall 6mo ago
  Does this help you build a custom PCB that you would send to a factory or like just design and simulate something you could build on your own? Or both / neither? I'm not fully understanding what this project does, could you offer insight?
  - coryrc 6mo ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47927171 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47927171
  - numpad0 6mo ago
    This is File -> New Project... -> New Hello World Project. The New Project button in hardware engineering tools often don't have the trailing 3 dots. I think most low-end projects done in KiCad are not tested beyond making sure there's no red squiggly underlines at a glance. You are your own F5 key and assembler/runtime crash reporter. Proper circuit verification through software simulation isn't needed for most digital designs unless you do your own wireless antenna, analog amps, and/or DRAM/PCIe/GbE/etc.
    - kreelman 6mo ago
      I like the "File -> New Project" analogy. I guess in theory, the original question is whether this project allows a board to be sent of for construction at a company that makes and populates boards. Yes, you could do this if you wanted to. As numpad0 has said though, it's early days for these boards and if you wanted to do something commercially reliable, you will most likely run into issues with things not being completely tested on these boards yet. These boards provide the ability to make your own boards to host the chipsets yourself, rather than relying on a third party providing the board. So what? What if you want USB-C? What if you want to make a square or a circular board? This project is a good step along the way to allowing you to make these kinds of things. On the hobbyist and corporate side, they also provide a way to provide a modern design that can use USB-C, which is becoming very common and is better than older USB options. As mentioned in the README.md "Available Development Boards" section, the Atmega16u2 chip was hard to come by for Hanqaqa in 2023. The Arduino guys (arduino.com ?) probably did a "lifetime buy" of these comms chips and they probably also have several shelves of fully built Arduino boards as well. Lifetime buys and keeping good stock levels mitigate the risk of difficulty building new boards... Just get one of the older working ones off the shelf and send it. However, for an organisation (even an open source board that becomes fairly popular) wanting to build their own board, not having a given comms chip is a problem. Replacing it with a commonly available one makes it much easier for people/companies wanting to build these boards in any kind of numbers. Having the board design readily available is really useful for the reasons above. It does seem like overkill if you just want to fiddle with a board, but if you make something that becomes popular that needs any kind of hardware adjustment, having the design becomes almost essential.
xrd 6mo ago
Does anyone have any suggestions on how to get started on projects like this, specifically alongside kids (very smart 9-13 in range)? I got them a 3d printer to move them into more "physical" computing, with mixed results. Any place to have a gentle introduction to PCB boards?
- kaipereira 6mo ago
  I personally love this macropad tutorial and it's how I got into doing circuit board design in highschool: https://hackpad.hackclub.com/ https://hackpad.hackclub.com/. Before doing this, it's really helpful if they have experience messing around with breadboards, so getting them a kit can help them into a soft transition too! I like to suggest making a macropad, then a keyboard, then going into a devboard, and then starting to make your own projects. But for kids that aren't quite in highschool yet, it can feel quite intimidating and the learning curve is moderately high, so getting them playing with breadboards first might be the best option ;) Hack Club will also give you a grant to cover the entire cost if your kids are over 13 through their programs like stasis, fallout, or forge (you can check their site for more info)
  - xrd 6mo ago
    Thanks so much. Your blog is great, btw! I expect more great things from you! I especially enjoyed your repo on your custom keyboard. My kids are crazy about keyboards. If you taught I class I would definitely sign them up!
- contingencies 6mo ago
  Strongly feel the logical progression is: (1) Wiring third party devices and modules to an existing MCU board and programming it (2) Making a PCB to plug modules and the MCU board in to (3) Making a PCB with integrated peripherals and only plugging the MCU board (4) Making making a whole board with everything. The MCU is typically far more fiddly than the devices (eg. crystals, storage, buses with conditioning, power stages, etc.), so continuing to plug the MCU in to a PCB while integrating peripherals is a good. You really need to be able to read a datasheet to do a nontrivial board and that brings in quite a few elements of electronics which are nontrivial for kids to grok without hand-holding and a lot of explanation. Pick an MCU with easy USB-C programming. RP2040 is a good modern option.
Liftyee 6mo ago
Neat project. These popular "commodity" devboard designs have been remixed and copied so much that it was just missing an open-source design to slot into many existing projects. I can imagine designing a board using one of these designs as a "template" but adding whatever capabilities I need, then knowing it fits a standard footprint.
- deleted 6mo ago
  [deleted]
- JKCalhoun 6mo ago
  Yeah, I've designed PCBs around PCBs—most recently around the LILYGO T-Display because it had an integrated LCD. I ended up adding my own DACs to the "mother" board though. It would be nice to have a single PCB that combined the best of both. (I still wonder if I could compete on final cost though.)
zamalek 6mo ago
Awesome! It's been a while, but my next level of learning was designing PCBs without breakout boards (and I had several failed revisions). This will be great to learn from.
qzgrid37 6mo ago
[dead]
ofrzeta 6mo ago
This is great. One of my goals is "create my own ESP32 PCB" however I am lacking the knowledge to do so. I was hoping to get some help by an LLM but people here said it's not that great in PCB layout. Still I will try Kicad with MCP :) Sure I am willing to learn but I need a more efficient path than a complete EE degree. I guess you can get quite far with a reference design but I understood that there's a lot to learn about ground layers, trace widths and so on.
- aaronmdjones 6mo ago
  A substantial portion of the things you need to know about layout are summarised quite nicely in the 4 YouTube videos in a previous comment of mine https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44549063 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44549063 Note that the audio in the first video doesn't start until 40 seconds in.
- maufl 6mo ago
  One thing I learned the hard way is the antenna must not lie on your PCB! Even if it's just board without copper. I didn't see this stated anywhere, but once you look, every devkit is doing that, the antenna sticks over the PCB. When I had it on the PCB I had very bad connectivity and very high power usage.
- nchie 6mo ago
  I haven't made a ESP32 design, but I recently learnt KiCad and PCB design enough to do a RP235x board with a non-reference design choice (1.8v VDDIO). I only used the official hardware guide + LLMs for questions, and had it work on the first try - it wasn't too hard!
  - fsniper 6mo ago
    I agree LLMs are exceptionally helpful on this.
- fsniper 6mo ago
  I have built one PCB with esp32-s3-wroom-1. Usb line is working and I can program the mcu module. However I could not make the ip5306 auto start on battery yet. And I am still unable to get audio from pcm5102a + pam8403 pipeline. What I have well learned is It's a hard, time consuming and relatively expensive hobby. Perhaps we could help each other?
dvh 6mo ago
I noticed these boards always use LDO with 5.5Vin max, why not use higher value like HT7533 (30V), it's only $0.02 more expensive and you can use it with 9V battery or 12V battery, or 2 lithium in series, or hack, even 4 fresh AAA are over the 5V limit. The other extreme is using *1117 LDO which has massive dropout like 1.1V which makes it them impossible to use with single lithium battery.
- jpleger 6mo ago
  The really awesome thing about these being in simple reference designs, is how easy it is to swap out things like that. I really like how they have things laid out, and will be using this as a reference for jr. folks on how to lay out logical blocks in KiCad. I have often thought how awesome it would be to have a bunch of proven / validated / supported open source blocks for common things like power supplies, sensors, etc. I think that at some point digikey or someone had a modular board that you could mix and match stuff into a reference design, but I can't remember the details.
ThomIves 5mo ago
I am eager to check this out. Thanks for sharing it!

253 points by Hanqaqa 6mo ago

wow, I've been wanting a "PCB design system" like this for such a long time. I've always found it stupidly hard to just take an existing working board and tweak it.

wpm 6mo ago
Worst is when I have a full board and schematic, but its for some other EDA program. Importing EagleCAD shit into KiCAD is agonizing, endless tedium. It's not like I'm not grateful to have free and open-source designs (specifically I'm talking about Adafruit, I like them, but all they use is EagleCAD), but goddamnit why can't it just be easy for once :(

slicktux 6mo ago

This is a nice project that I will definitely be looking into for my projects!

precompute 6mo ago

Awesome.

lloydatkinson 6mo ago

Is the intention that you "fork" the PCB design and use it as a base/template for you own schematics/PCB design, or something else?

junon 6mo ago
I could imagine small companies that rely on these boards and that also have their fab and sourcing pipelines set up would be able to easier source these themselves. Just have to generate the Gerbers (fabrication output format most manus need) and then send it off as part of a larger order, etc. Especially if you're able to replace certain small/passive components with those you already have in bulk, it could be a potential cost cutting measure. Just a guess though. For my case, they'd be useful if I wanted to know how certain subcircuits are designed or laid out. Even for beginners, taking it into kicad, enabling the selection of only tracks and vias and deleting them all, then doing a full re-layout of the board as practice would be a cool project if you're wanting to learn.
Mizza 6mo ago
I've got some projects that use ADCs on Pi "Hats" that connect to controls, I could see a future version which integrates that ADCs and pots directly onto the board to get a slimmer profile. It's quite handy, I wonder what the unit cost is with assembly at JLCPCB.
coryrc 6mo ago
Yes to the first half, for the most part.
throwup238 6mo ago
Most electrical engineers use “reference designs” published by the IC manufacturers to design their PCBs, although any open source commercially available design can act as a reference. They essentially copy the schematics from the PDF (or import if file formats/converters allow), ripping out whatever they don’t need, then reroute the PCB using their layers. In some cases, when their PCB fab layer stack up is similar enough to the original board, they can go a step further and copy paste most of the PCB into their design so that any signal integrity work carries over. Realistically this is only really practical for low speed designs but still useful for a whole class of electronics. I don’t use KiCad but software like Altium support modular schematic sheets and PCB rooms so theoretically it can imported into that (since KiCad’s format is open source S-expr)

simojo 6mo ago

Recently, I made an Arduino UNO that I showed to have better switching characteristics than a commercial board. It was a great project to help me understand how seemingly inconsequential routing practices can lead to issues down the line. http://www.simonjjones.com/#/posts/golden-arduino http://www.simonjjones.com/#/posts/golden-arduino

achr2 6mo ago
I enjoyed your post - PCB routing is often an act of 'zen and the art of..' for me and I recently did a similar exercise for an esp32.
bschwindHN 6mo ago
You should be able to improve it further with a 4 layer board, as you can have the signal lines closer to their reference planes, and can more easily avoid signals crossing each other and breaking reference planes.

hathawsh 6mo ago

This is an amazing resource. It was difficult to appreciate what this resource was for until I tried to create my own boards based on an ESP32. It's not really difficult to build around ESP32, it's just that I don't know what I don't know. With starting points like these, I can start with a lot more confidence. Thank you!

hattmall 6mo ago
Does this help you build a custom PCB that you would send to a factory or like just design and simulate something you could build on your own? Or both / neither? I'm not fully understanding what this project does, could you offer insight?
- coryrc 6mo ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47927171 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47927171
- numpad0 6mo ago
  This is File -> New Project... -> New Hello World Project. The New Project button in hardware engineering tools often don't have the trailing 3 dots. I think most low-end projects done in KiCad are not tested beyond making sure there's no red squiggly underlines at a glance. You are your own F5 key and assembler/runtime crash reporter. Proper circuit verification through software simulation isn't needed for most digital designs unless you do your own wireless antenna, analog amps, and/or DRAM/PCIe/GbE/etc.
  - kreelman 6mo ago
    I like the "File -> New Project" analogy. I guess in theory, the original question is whether this project allows a board to be sent of for construction at a company that makes and populates boards. Yes, you could do this if you wanted to. As numpad0 has said though, it's early days for these boards and if you wanted to do something commercially reliable, you will most likely run into issues with things not being completely tested on these boards yet. These boards provide the ability to make your own boards to host the chipsets yourself, rather than relying on a third party providing the board. So what? What if you want USB-C? What if you want to make a square or a circular board? This project is a good step along the way to allowing you to make these kinds of things. On the hobbyist and corporate side, they also provide a way to provide a modern design that can use USB-C, which is becoming very common and is better than older USB options. As mentioned in the README.md "Available Development Boards" section, the Atmega16u2 chip was hard to come by for Hanqaqa in 2023. The Arduino guys (arduino.com ?) probably did a "lifetime buy" of these comms chips and they probably also have several shelves of fully built Arduino boards as well. Lifetime buys and keeping good stock levels mitigate the risk of difficulty building new boards... Just get one of the older working ones off the shelf and send it. However, for an organisation (even an open source board that becomes fairly popular) wanting to build their own board, not having a given comms chip is a problem. Replacing it with a commonly available one makes it much easier for people/companies wanting to build these boards in any kind of numbers. Having the board design readily available is really useful for the reasons above. It does seem like overkill if you just want to fiddle with a board, but if you make something that becomes popular that needs any kind of hardware adjustment, having the design becomes almost essential.

xrd 6mo ago

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to get started on projects like this, specifically alongside kids (very smart 9-13 in range)? I got them a 3d printer to move them into more "physical" computing, with mixed results. Any place to have a gentle introduction to PCB boards?

kaipereira 6mo ago
I personally love this macropad tutorial and it's how I got into doing circuit board design in highschool: https://hackpad.hackclub.com/ https://hackpad.hackclub.com/. Before doing this, it's really helpful if they have experience messing around with breadboards, so getting them a kit can help them into a soft transition too! I like to suggest making a macropad, then a keyboard, then going into a devboard, and then starting to make your own projects. But for kids that aren't quite in highschool yet, it can feel quite intimidating and the learning curve is moderately high, so getting them playing with breadboards first might be the best option ;) Hack Club will also give you a grant to cover the entire cost if your kids are over 13 through their programs like stasis, fallout, or forge (you can check their site for more info)
- xrd 6mo ago
  Thanks so much. Your blog is great, btw! I expect more great things from you! I especially enjoyed your repo on your custom keyboard. My kids are crazy about keyboards. If you taught I class I would definitely sign them up!
contingencies 6mo ago
Strongly feel the logical progression is: (1) Wiring third party devices and modules to an existing MCU board and programming it (2) Making a PCB to plug modules and the MCU board in to (3) Making a PCB with integrated peripherals and only plugging the MCU board (4) Making making a whole board with everything. The MCU is typically far more fiddly than the devices (eg. crystals, storage, buses with conditioning, power stages, etc.), so continuing to plug the MCU in to a PCB while integrating peripherals is a good. You really need to be able to read a datasheet to do a nontrivial board and that brings in quite a few elements of electronics which are nontrivial for kids to grok without hand-holding and a lot of explanation. Pick an MCU with easy USB-C programming. RP2040 is a good modern option.

Liftyee 6mo ago

Neat project. These popular "commodity" devboard designs have been remixed and copied so much that it was just missing an open-source design to slot into many existing projects. I can imagine designing a board using one of these designs as a "template" but adding whatever capabilities I need, then knowing it fits a standard footprint.

deleted 6mo ago
[deleted]
JKCalhoun 6mo ago
Yeah, I've designed PCBs around PCBs—most recently around the LILYGO T-Display because it had an integrated LCD. I ended up adding my own DACs to the "mother" board though. It would be nice to have a single PCB that combined the best of both. (I still wonder if I could compete on final cost though.)

zamalek 6mo ago

Awesome! It's been a while, but my next level of learning was designing PCBs without breakout boards (and I had several failed revisions). This will be great to learn from.

qzgrid37 6mo ago

[dead]

ofrzeta 6mo ago

This is great. One of my goals is "create my own ESP32 PCB" however I am lacking the knowledge to do so. I was hoping to get some help by an LLM but people here said it's not that great in PCB layout. Still I will try Kicad with MCP :) Sure I am willing to learn but I need a more efficient path than a complete EE degree. I guess you can get quite far with a reference design but I understood that there's a lot to learn about ground layers, trace widths and so on.

aaronmdjones 6mo ago
A substantial portion of the things you need to know about layout are summarised quite nicely in the 4 YouTube videos in a previous comment of mine https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44549063 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44549063 Note that the audio in the first video doesn't start until 40 seconds in.
maufl 6mo ago
One thing I learned the hard way is the antenna must not lie on your PCB! Even if it's just board without copper. I didn't see this stated anywhere, but once you look, every devkit is doing that, the antenna sticks over the PCB. When I had it on the PCB I had very bad connectivity and very high power usage.
nchie 6mo ago
I haven't made a ESP32 design, but I recently learnt KiCad and PCB design enough to do a RP235x board with a non-reference design choice (1.8v VDDIO). I only used the official hardware guide + LLMs for questions, and had it work on the first try - it wasn't too hard!
- fsniper 6mo ago
  I agree LLMs are exceptionally helpful on this.
fsniper 6mo ago
I have built one PCB with esp32-s3-wroom-1. Usb line is working and I can program the mcu module. However I could not make the ip5306 auto start on battery yet. And I am still unable to get audio from pcm5102a + pam8403 pipeline. What I have well learned is It's a hard, time consuming and relatively expensive hobby. Perhaps we could help each other?

dvh 6mo ago

I noticed these boards always use LDO with 5.5Vin max, why not use higher value like HT7533 (30V), it's only $0.02 more expensive and you can use it with 9V battery or 12V battery, or 2 lithium in series, or hack, even 4 fresh AAA are over the 5V limit. The other extreme is using *1117 LDO which has massive dropout like 1.1V which makes it them impossible to use with single lithium battery.

jpleger 6mo ago
The really awesome thing about these being in simple reference designs, is how easy it is to swap out things like that. I really like how they have things laid out, and will be using this as a reference for jr. folks on how to lay out logical blocks in KiCad. I have often thought how awesome it would be to have a bunch of proven / validated / supported open source blocks for common things like power supplies, sensors, etc. I think that at some point digikey or someone had a modular board that you could mix and match stuff into a reference design, but I can't remember the details.

ThomIves 5mo ago

I am eager to check this out. Thanks for sharing it!