PCB Design Review: Tinysparrow, A Module For CAN Hacking Needs

I enjoy seeing modules that can make designing other devices easier, and when I did a call for design reviews, [enp6s0] has submitted one such board to us. It’s a module called TinySparrow (G…

Too Much Over-optimization Is Never Enough!

A discussion came up on the Hackaday Discord PCB design channel about resistor networks, and it got me thinking about whether we (the hacker community) use them in designs or not. These handy devic…

Proper Routing Makes For Many Happy Return Paths

Here’s a question for you: when your PCB has a ground plane layer, where do return signals flow? It seems like a trick question, but as [Kristof Mulier] explains, there’s more to return…

Share Your Projects: KiCad Automations And Pretty Renders

I have a pretty large GitHub repository, with all of my boards open-sourced there. Now, I’m finally facing the major problem it has – it can be uncomfortable for others to work with. I …

Fabbing A Fab New Watch Face

[STR-Alorman] is into vintage watches, particularly Omega Seamaster quartz numbers from the 1980s. Among his favorites is the Seamaster Calypso III, a precious few of which were created in a lovely…

ProPico For Your Pro Pico Needs

Ever feel like the Pi Pico board could be doing way more given its footprint? Does it bother you that the RP2040’s ADC quality is even further decreased because of the noisy onboard switching…

From KiCad To Blender For A Stunning Render

We love Blender. It brings you 3D modeling, but not in a CAD way — instead, people commonly use it to create animations, movies, games, and even things like VR models. In short, Blender is ab…

An Animated LED Fireplace Powered By The CH32V003

Once you’ve mastered the near-magical ability of turning your ideas into a piece of hardware you can hold in your hand, it’s only natural that you’ll want to spread the joy. The h…

Revive A Sony Vaio P-Series With KiCad’s Background Bitmaps

You might remember that KiCad 7 came out this February, with a multitude of wonderful features. One of them was particularly exciting to see, and the KiCad newsletter even had an animated GIF to pr…

Making A Solder Paste Stencil From What You Have On Hand

Sometimes there are moments when an engineer has to use whatever materials they have to hand in order to complete the job on time. Such a situation arose at the RevSpace hacker space in Den Haag, N…

Designing A PCB GPS Antenna From Scratch

These days, when it comes to GPS devices the antenna is typically part of the package. But what better opportunity for [Pepijn] to learn how to make a GPS antenna from scratch for a badge add-on? A…

PCB Repair Is A Sticky Proposition

What do you do when a PCB is cracked or even broken in two? [MH987] has a plan: superglue the board back and then bridge the traces with solder, solder paste, or wire. The exact method, of course, …

An In-Depth Comparison Of Hobby PCB Manufacturers

[Icamtuf] has been working on a prototyping run of a project, which involves getting PCBs made by several low volume PCB manufacturing companies. After receiving the boards, he analyzed the results…

Try It Out

It’s like Star Wars versus Star Trek at a SciFi convention, or asking creamy or chunky at the National Peanut Butter Appreciation Festival. (OK, we made that one up.) When Jenny reviewed the 1.0 ve…

Chip Shortage Engineering: Misusing DIP Packages

After years of seeing people showing off and trading their badge Simple Add-Ons (SAOs) at Supercon, this year I finally decided to make one myself. Now for a first attempt, it would have been enoug…

Bespoke Implants Are Real—if You Put In The Time

A subset of hackers have RFID implants, but there is a limited catalog. When [Miana] looked for a device that would open a secure door at her work, she did not find the implant she needed, even tho…

Where Did Your PCB Go Wrong? KiRI Knows

When working on a PCB design in KiCad, it’s helpful that the files are all text and can easily be checked into Git or other source control. However, stepping back through the revisions to det…

Easyeda2KiCad: Never Draw A Footprint Again

What if I told you that you might never need to draw a new footprint again? Such is my friend’s impression of the tool that she’s shown me and I’m about to show you in turn, havin…

Different Etching Strokes For Different PCBs, Folks

[Sebastian] probably didn’t think he was wading into controversial waters when he posted on his experimental method for etching PCBs (in German). It’s not like etching with hydrochloric…