More on KICad 6 and PCBs

I have been updating all my PCB designs to allow for using the more commonly available LMR16006 with variable voltage, rather than the fixed 3.3V regulator. All done now.

But I have also made a couple more boards.

For a start, an ESP32-WROOM-32 board with more GPIOs. The previous generic board was this.

It has 6 pins, GND plus 5xGPIO with some links. I have updated the silkscreen to have GPIO numbers all over the place as it is a pain to find them on older boards if not printed on the board!

But I decided a more powerful generic design may be in order, so did this new one today...

This is a tad bigger, but 16 GPIO pins. Yes, one each side is pre-linked to GND, but can be cut. And options to link to DC supply or 3.3V are always useful. Again, an RGB LED on board. And I have labelled all the GPIO numbers. This should be useful.

But this has been a busy weekend, and I have also made this...

Now this is a fun board, an interface for an ASR33 using 20mA current loop. It uses some simple ICs that are aimed at providing fixed current driver for LEDs, but seem ideal for this use. For avoidance of doubt this is not the same as 4-20mA current loop used for some control systems (an analogue signal level), but a simple make/break on 20mA, and used for teletypes 50+ years ago.

All of these will be a little over a week to arrive, so fun to test when they get here. I'll post more, specifically on the ASR33 board, once I have them.

To be honest I am amazed how easy KiCad makes it to just knock out a circuit design, do PCB layout, and be all ready to order actual boards.