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Prior to routing, take plenty of time to carefully place components in proper places on your circuit boards. Careful part placement is vital to producing optimal board layouts. Place high priority parts (oscillators, high-speed interfaces such as USB, etc.) first to ensure that high priority routes are optimized. Group related parts together (for example, all power supply and battery monitoring parts should generally be grouped closely together). In general, the micro controller should be centrally located for convenient routing to all peripherals
Use 45 degree angles and minimize sharp right angles. Less of a problem today due to manufacturing processes but this is considered to be best practice
Vias and other holes in a circuit board contain a ring of metal around them known as an annular ring (for vias) or pad (for through-hole parts). These rings exist on both the top and bottom of the board; be careful not to short traces together through the copper in pads and annular rings.
To pick some from
Tips and tricks from HW members
Decoupling capacitors need to be physically close to what they are decoupling
What is it? Acts as a type of energy reservoir. Once fully charged, their job is to simply oppose any unexpected change in your input voltages from a power supply
If the input voltage drops, then a decoupling capacitor will be able to provide enough power to an IC to keep the voltage stable.
If the voltage increases, then a decoupling capacitor will be able to absorb the excess energy trying to flow through to the IC, which again keeps the voltage stable.
Why do we need them?
Some components like integrated circuits rely on their input voltage being as steady as possible, so when you place a decoupling capacitor next to an IC, you’ll be able to protect those sensitive chips by filtering out any excess noise and creating a nice, steady source of power. What happens if you don’t use decoupling capacitors next to your IC? Well, you’ll likely wind up with a processor that starts skipping instructions and behaving abnormally.
there’s a ton of electrical noise on a typical circuit board, and the steady 5V that we think we have flowing all over the place is actually jumping around as it moves from component to component.
example:
Keeping the following in mind
Placement. You’ll always want to connect your decoupling capacitors between your power source, whether that’s 5V or 3.3V, and ground.
Distance. You’ll always want to place your decoupling capacitors as close as possible to your IC. The farther away they are, the less effective they’ll be.
Ratings. As a general guideline, we always recommend adding a single 100nF ceramic capacitor and a larger 0.1-10uF electrolytic capacitor for each integrated circuit on your board.
DRC Rules
IC footprints pad 1 square and the rest round (copy styles from MS library)
Always think about the return path during pcb layout
Do research online as many companies have released application notes about circuits related to their products
The layout board Nita might use for week 4
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The led board that we could maybe use (from an old hardware 101)