Free samples
Try it before you buy
Watch real lessons from the video course and read excerpts from the book. Nothing to sign up for.
Watch the course
Course 1 · Your First PCBs · based on Volume 1 of the book
Read the book
Free excerpts from drafted chapters. Want the full thing? Get the beta.
-
Volume 1 · Chapter 1 · 2 excerpts
What a PCB Is and How It's Made — excerpt 1
Before you touch a single tool, it helps to know exactly what you are setting out to build. In this chapter, I'll show you what a printed circuit board really…
-
Volume 1 · Chapter 2 · 2 excerpts
A Hands-On Tour: Schematic — excerpt 1
Enough reading. In this chapter you will open the Schematic Editor and draw a real circuit, the same way you would on a paying job, only smaller. By the end…
-
Volume 1 · Chapter 3 · 2 excerpts
A Hands-On Tour: Layout — excerpt 1
At the end of the last chapter you used the command "Update PCB from Schematic" to have KiCad import the circuit's components and nets in the layout editor. That is…
-
Volume 1 · Chapter 4
The Concepts Behind What You Did
You've now drawn a complete schematic in one editor, then turned it into a real board layout in another, all the way to files a factory could build. You did…
-
Volume 1 · Chapter 5 · 2 excerpts
The Two Workflows, Formalized — excerpt 1
You have now done the whole thing once. In Chapter 2 you drew a complete schematic, in Chapter 3 you turned it into a manufacturable board, and in Chapter 4…
-
Volume 1 · Chapter 6
Finding, Importing, and Managing Parts
In Chapter 2 you placed every symbol your blinker needed, and in Chapter 3 you gave each one a footprint, without once leaving KiCad or opening a web browser. This…
-
Volume 1 · Chapter 7 · 2 excerpts
Editor Orientation (Just Enough) — excerpt 1
You have already driven both of KiCad's main editors. In Chapter 2 you drew a complete schematic, and in Chapter 3 you turned it into a finished board. In this…
-
Volume 1 · Chapter 8 · 2 excerpts
Project 1: Breadboard Power Supply — excerpt 1
In Chapter 2 you drew a schematic, in Chapter 3 you turned the schematic into a manufacturable board, and you did both while I guided you every click. Chapter 5…
-
Volume 1 · Chapter 9
Project 2: Tiny Solar Power Supply
In Chapter 8, you built a board of your own, starting from an empty project to a folder of manufacturing files. This chapter builds a second board the same way,…
-
Volume 1 · Chapter 10
Getting Your Board Made
You have built two boards now, and twice you finished with a folder of manufacturing files sitting quietly on your disk. That folder is a real board waiting to be…
-
Volume 1 · Chapter 11 · 2 excerpts
Essential Recipes (Beginner) — excerpt 1
You have now taken two boards all the way from a blank sheet to a parcel in the post, and along the way you learned a complete workflow twice over.…
-
Volume 2 · Chapter 1
Creating Custom Symbols
In Volume 1 you learned to find the symbols and footprints you needed. You searched KiCad's built-in libraries, you pulled parts from reputable online repositories, and you managed them in…
-
Volume 2 · Chapter 2
Creating Custom Footprints
The symbol you drew in the last chapter has a corresponding physical device, that in KiCad is represented by a footprint, but that footprint doesn't exist yet. Drawing it is…
-
Volume 2 · Chapter 3
Board Setup That Matters
Once you have completed the schematic design of a new board, and you move to the layout phase, the first thing you do in the layout editor is to set…
-
Volume 2 · Chapter 4
Copper Zones and Fills
In the last chapter you set up the board and assigned its nets to net classes, so the power nets are routed with wide tracks and the logic nets with…
-
Volume 2 · Chapter 5
Bill of Materials, In Depth
The board is designed. The copper is poured, the parts are placed, and the net classes set the track widths for the power and signal nets. What you do not…
-
Volume 2 · Chapter 6
Design for Manufacturing
You have a finished design and a bill of materials to build it from. The last question is whether a factory can actually make what you have drawn, and make…
-
Volume 2 · Chapter 7
Project (Warm-up): 4×8×8 LED Matrix Array
In the capstone project for volume 2, which you will work on in the next chapter, you will need to author custom parts. But before doing that, in this warm-up…
-
Volume 2 · Chapter 8
Project (Capstone): DRV8833 Dual H-Bridge Motor Driver
This is the capstone of Volume 2. This project gives you the opportunity to put to use everything the volume has taught. Up to this point, each chapter has drilled…
-
Volume 2 · Chapter 9
Project (Extension): Four-Motor Driver with Two DRV8833s
This chapter takes the board you finished in Chapter 8 and adds a second DRV8833. The new board will be able to drive a small four-wheeled robot with independent control…
-
Volume 2 · Chapter 10
Intermediate Recipes
Volume 1 ended with a collection of beginner recipes, small self-contained techniques that did not belong to any one project but that you reach for again and again. This chapter…
-
Volume 2 · Chapter 11
Assembling the Board: Reflow or Hand Soldering
Chapter 8 ended by placing an order for the board you designed. The Gerbers, the drill file, the two position files and the paste layer went off to a factory,…