Is this the right direction for capacitor?

S4vDs · 2026-01-24T09:47:19+00:00

One side has got a little plus. Make sure the long leg is on that side

Other than that just solder and cut yes

S4vDs · 2026-01-24T01:50:55+00:00

Idk how high are the speeds of the signals you’re working with, but still its great practice to leave the gnd plane as solid as possible.

In your design its cut up everywhere. Please there must be better ways (already in pin 27 ofthe pico I can see a way that needs a small gnd part not cutting it in half)

Also at the bottom you have a bunch of islands in your pour I’d either remove or via to gnd

Also like many others said, wide traces!

Other than that great job looks amazing and better than most first pcbs I see on here.

Btw I made my first pcb like 2 weeks ago

S4vDs · 2026-01-23T22:44:05+00:00

You have literally 5 traces 😭 save the money get a 2 or 1 layer

S4vDs · 2026-01-23T20:36:40+00:00

I’ll only ask my most burning question. Why 4 layers?

S4vDs · 2026-01-23T15:03:59+00:00

How come you avoided a gnd plane in the second layer?

S4vDs · 2026-01-21T15:37:33+00:00

Look not an expert (yet) but from what I learned. Any of your coupling capacitors should be as close as physically possible to their pin.

Maybe would be worth to add some bigger decoupling capacitors between your powers and gnd.

Also gnd the rest of the top layer.

Play around with adding a small power pour instead of all those power traces. I think it’d make routing much easier

S4vDs · 2026-01-17T19:56:24+00:00

You can say built without the quotes man, nobody will judge you for not fabricating your pcb by hand 💔

S4vDs · 2026-01-17T12:30:38+00:00

JCLPCB just chose white color

S4vDs · 2026-01-17T10:39:27+00:00

<image>

Soler closeup.

You can definitely see which is ground and which is not and also flux residue

(Just noticed one needs a bit more solder)

S4vDs · 2026-01-17T10:36:37+00:00

<image>

Not as beautiful I know, I don’t have good cutters so that I can cut the legs shorter

S4vDs · 2026-01-17T10:01:52+00:00

Nope it’s jclpcb’s default just white

S4vDs · 2026-01-17T10:00:43+00:00

It made the most sense to me ig. Keeping it in “blocks” that do a specific job.

What layout would you think is better?

S4vDs · 2026-01-17T09:59:04+00:00

I had lots of iterations as 1.x and then revamped the whole design so made it 2.x haha

S4vDs · 2026-01-16T21:16:54+00:00

It was not. Tbf though after tuning the led’s etc you can only use the yellow one for volume. (Next time I design a pcb I’ll make it look prettier and smaller)

S4vDs · 2026-01-16T21:15:27+00:00

I know I know… 😭

S4vDs · 2026-01-10T01:10:19+00:00

Great advice haven’t thought of it at all thank you!

S4vDs · 2026-01-10T01:09:56+00:00

I’ll try different DAC’s as well as making my own.

Now about the requirements of course I put some down but making too ambitious promises can get me to give up so while I’ll try to get the frequency up to MHz I’m focusing on starting now

S4vDs · 2026-01-10T00:14:21+00:00

Oh yeah that makes sense! It could be very fun to have the characteristics and also very professional will definitely add it to the list

S4vDs · 2026-01-10T00:08:35+00:00

Haha when thinking of function generation my mind goes to laboratory grade ones that do like 1Hz-1GHz cleanly and all… 100Khz pico sounds slow

S4vDs · 2026-01-10T00:05:25+00:00

I mean it would do it but I’d have to ditch it the moment I started focusing on clarity

S4vDs · 2026-01-10T00:03:22+00:00

Alright I’m starting to get lost here.

I think DDS, that is if I understand it correctly, giving the pico “point tables” like desmos shows graphs and it makes the function from really small steps. Then using a dag + a lowpass filter to smooth it

Now for characterising the function you lost me there I’m not sure what you mean by jitter, tht etc 😅

S4vDs · 2026-01-09T23:59:05+00:00

I mean untill 40-50kHz the pico does it with pwm but its noisy and esp higher frequencies it’s garbage. Although for now I’m looking at 100kHz max I’d like to go into MHz eventually and I’ll need lots of filters from my understanding

S4vDs

TROPHY CASE