RE: KiCAD 8: RX23E-B kit - serial comms schematic

dougw — Sat, 02 Nov 2024 18:19:09 GMT

I would tend to include footprints for all variants of solutions I'm interested in, so that I could populate each particular solution when needed. I always buy several PCBs, so I could even assemble multiple versions, each populated in a different way. Sometimes it is worth routing some signals to jumper selectable pins to allow resolution of conflicts.

RE: KiCAD 8: RX23E-B kit - serial comms schematic

shabaz — Sat, 02 Nov 2024 15:49:18 GMT

Hi Jan,

One idea could be to stick a flat-flex connector footprint on the board, so that the problem is pushed away to another day : ) i.e. a separate LCD PCB could be attached optionally one day. And maybe bringing out two UART options, so that one can be avoided if the LCD were utilized.

40-pin LCDs are quite common, but they consume a lot of the microcontroller pins : ( I've not tested the symbol/layout below, but when I created it, I noticed that some of the 40-pin LCDs had a slightly larger row spacing than others, hence the reason why there are extra pads along one row in the footprint. There are fewer-pin multiplexed LCDs so they could be a better choice (if the microcontroller supports that).