Post by @Suiseiseki@freesoftwareextremist.com

2026-09-26 13:07 UTC

@reimu@mk.fumo.pictures @tyler@nicecrew.digital Yes. KiCad is straightforward provided you have a strong GNU/Mind. You start with the circuit design (which is a pain in the ass and can be skipped for simple designs where you're making a passive connector for example), then you lay out the pcb, add the edge cuts and put some nice labels and artwork on top and then run the Design Rules Check (and fix the actual issues and ignore the bloat ones). For any clocks below 24 MHz (like moderate speed SPI), you usually don't need to worry about impedance, decoupling and crosstalk at all - many electronic circuits cycle at 50kHz at most. Above 24MHz, proprietary physics starts biting - even 100MHz is bad, let alone 1GHz. What kind of circuit do you want to design?

Replies (2)

@EdBoatConnoisseur@poa.st 2026-09-26 13:14

@Suiseiseki@freesoftwareextremist.com @reimu@mk.fumo.pictures @tyler@nicecrew.digital man i still find kicad hard to use, then again i learnt circuit simulation back in around 2015 with livewire, and that because it was the tool a highschool classmate had learnt at a technical course outside the electronic technician highschool cuz our prof was teaching us without a simulator, only pen, paper, calculator and protoboard so our circuits could burn if we didn't didn't tun the numbers and he enforced "measure and math thrice, then build and measure twice"

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@Suiseiseki@freesoftwareextremist.com 2026-09-26 13:13

@reimu@mk.fumo.pictures @tyler@nicecrew.digital Such pictured circuit is not very complicated (it's a real waste of fibreglass and copper) - +5V is current-limited to supply LEDs via a few resisters. Soldering on such tiny USB-C pins are a real pain in the ass (just use micro-B or grab an old broken USB cable and directly solder +5V and GND to through-holes ですぅ), plus it seems to be missing the additional resistors needed to be USB-C-compliant and thus receive power from compliant supplies.

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