In trying to redesign, this board, I’ve encountered several helpful suggestions in terms of routing and component choice. This session was spent fulfilling them.

First, for the SWD programming interface, I had initially exposed female socket headers, which were layed horizontal, and thus occupied tons of room. Instead someone suggested I use a tc2030 connector, which is significantly smaller footprint-wise, and looks pretty cool.

I also deliberated whether to use a 2 layer or 4 layer board, and after some thought, for this design I’ll be using a 4 layer board. Though a 2 layer board is easier to setup, it is harder to execute well, and certainly suffers from more pitfalls in terms of signal integrity.

Specifically, within the 4 layer stackup, I opted for signal-ground-ground-power stackup (same as last time), because I can dedicate a ground to analog and another to digital, as is common in audio applications.

Finally, I added 3d models that were missing (somehow again) for the footprints, leaving me with board setup for next work session.

That’s all for now folks….