My first PCB - any obvious mistakes?

The issue is that both the temp header and power header are the same, so you could accidentally plug power into the temp connector. The power header is also non-polarized, but that’s not a huge issue here.

As for the wider traces, that’s to give them a bit more strength. Since all of the connectors are thru-hole and the board is double sided with plated holes, you are likely OK here.

/mike

n1ist:
The issue is that both the temp header and power header are the same, so you could accidentally plug power into the temp connector. The power header is also non-polarized, but that’s not a huge issue here.

Ah, I see. The plan is to only expose the TEMP header outside the box. The PWR header is only intended for debugging.

n1ist:
As for the wider traces, that’s to give them a bit more strength. Since all of the connectors are thru-hole and the board is double sided with plated holes, you are likely OK here.

Right, I see now that the traces could easily be a bit wider. I'll take that into account in my next design :)

Thanks again, Mike!

  • Johannes

When you have headers/connectors you may unplug/plug them in/out several times throughout the life of a board.

This can make the thin joint between the pad and track fracture, making the exiting track thicker can prevent this.

Some still add what are called “Teardrops” to prevent this although that’s going to the extreme, its just good practise that if you can the track should be thicker when going into a pad that may subject to mechanical stress.

What Mike said about the connectors.

I have had boards in the past where it was insisted that connectors should be as they were, it only after someone plugged the wrong thing in or the wrong way around that they got changed.

I once ruined a monitor I had just repaired by plugging the wrong plug into the wrong socket because it was the same.

I received my PCBs yesterday!

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/190333/Color-Th … 11-pcb.jpg

However as I started soldering, I noticed I made a mistake with the ISP header :frowning:

In the [schematics:

  • MISO is connected to the GRN net which is connected to MOSI on the ATtiny

  • MOSI is connected to the RED net which is connected to PB4 on the ATtiny

This probably stems from me swapping RED/GRN/BLU on the ATtiny to make for easier routing. I must have forgotten to also swap them on the ISP header…

I guess the main point of confusion is that the net names don’t match the ISP pin labels. Is there any way to split a net in two, each with different names? Or connect two nets without merging their names? For example:

          |---------- GRN
PB0 ------|
          |---------- MOSI

Luckily I was able to work around the error by cutting two traces and adding two air wires. After this fix everything seems to work :slight_smile:

Those DC jack pins also look way, way too big. (I take it that it is a DC jack by the pinout).

mattylad:
Those DC jack pins also look way, way too big. (I take it that it is a DC jack by the pinout).

Yeah, they’re too big. I used the POWER_JACK_PTH package from the SparkFun library.

mattylad:
Those DC jack pins also look way, way too big. (I take it that it is a DC jack by the pinout).

not all cheap proto pcb makers have slots as an option, so for something like a pcb-jack that has flat wide pins,

big holes are the only way and it works just fine