Fixing the KineticBoard

Did you know that something as simple as a double-sided version of a Pi Pico can cost around $150 to manufacture from JLC? Yea, I didn’t either.

Silkscreen Redesigns!

I made some newer art to put as a silkscreen. I think what I had before was okay, but it seemed a bit sloppy.

GitHub submodule stuff

I updated the KineticBoard Repo and added it as a submodule to my main repository.

Capacitor Fix

From my last session, I ended with picking a capacitor that had a higher voltage rating since passing 12V through a 6.3V capacitor will definitely cause dielectric breakdown. My solution last time was to use an 25V electrolytic aluminum capacitor, which ended up being too big. To resolve the overlap, I just chose a different SMD Capacitor footprint—this time for a tantalum capacitor since they’re much smaller.

Inverted Screw Terminals

Apparently the screw terminals were inverted this whole time. I realized this since the arrows were pointing toward the terminals from the center of the board, rather from the outside (the arrows indicate the direction that the wire will enter). I fixed this by rotating each screw terminal by 180 but this just caused 19 DRC violations. Of course, I had to reroute all of the traces that were flipped, and of course I had made it so that fixing one trace blocks the other trace from passing through. I ended up solving this problem by dropping a via and routing the board through one of the 2 middle layers.

And it costs WHAT???

Yup. The board itself costs $7, but then JLCPCBA decided to ramp up the cost to $150 with a $50 setup fee, $30 “loading into the feeder” fee, and so on. I’m thinking of buying a hot plate to “solder” all of the SMD parts on the board at home, but some of my caps are 0402 and those things are genuinely microscopic.