Has @lookmumnocomputer ever released any KiCad schematic files or libraries?
I’ve found a few things scattered across the forum and different GitHub projects, but I haven’t found anything definitive, and every time I open anybody’s projects in KiCad I usually get a few (???) symbols.
It might be good for the community to have a standard component library for KOSMO-style PCBs, done in the way Sam usually does - “big” resistors, surface-mount knobs and jacks. KOSMO_ladderfilter seems to have the right parts, but I’m not sure their origin.
Would this be a useful initiative, or is there something that I’m missing?
“Surface mount” means something else. I think the term you want is “board mount” or “PCB mount”.
I’m not sure what you’re advocating for. Parts are mostly pretty standard. There are footprints in KiCad for most of what’s used. I’ve done a few custom footprints here (like 1/4" jack and power header).
I do use other custom footprints, mostly just adapted from standard ones to show both reference and value on the silkscreen though.
Any ideas what’s happening there? I’m a total KiCad newb and I’m finding it quite frustrating, it’s eaten up two of my Sundays now and I’ve made… zero progress.
To be fully transparent, I’m trying to make a stripped-down (3 analog in, 2 knob, 1 analog out, 5cm wide, power-and-arduino-on-the-back) version of your DAC/INO in Kosmo “style”, as I mentioned before - board (not surface :)) mount jacks and pots, “big” spacing for resistors/caps/etc. I’ve got a lot of things I want to program in software, so this is going to be a cornerstone of my master plan…
Having your Dac/Ino as a single schematic that I could hack apart rather than lots of different .schs would also be tremendously helpful, but I can’t figure out a way to do that in KiCad, so my current plan is just starting over from scratch using the PDF as a reference file.
Well, that’s weird. The symbol there is just Device:CP which is about as standard as they come. Do you not have it? R1 and C2 are Device:R and Device:C so you definitely have the Device library.
Or maybe you accidentally changed the symbol field in the C1 properties dialog?
Cool, looking forward to it! The current full-scale dac/ino is definitely too large for a lot of what it could otherwise be used for and the dac/ino lite is more for controllers rather than modules. I’ve given some thoughts to making dac/ino smaller, maybe with a PCB sandwich design and/or SMD. But not any time soon.
As I’ve mentioned elsewhere I’ve decided I’ve been using resistor footprints with too small lead spacing and am switching over…
Yeah, I had reasons for doing it that way but they’re no longer very good ones. Maybe I should fix that. The simplest way would be to dive down into each heirarchical sheet, select everything and cut it, then exit back to the main sheet (or maybe one level of heirarchy) and paste.
Going from the schematic as the source seems the most reliable way to start with any board design. It is the root script for transcribing electronics (nowadays, does anyone else remember the attempted ASCII style Teletype sheets of yesteryear? No? Just me then)
As I’ve mentioned elsewhere I’ve decided I’ve been using resistor footprints with too small lead spacing and am switching over…
The footprint for the ones on the ladder filter, which are “big”, use the R_silkvalue:R_Axial_DIN0207_L6.3mm_D2.5mm_P7.62mm_Horizontal_silkvalue footprint, but yours are ao_tht:R_Axial_DIN0207_L6.3mm_D2.5mm_P7.62mm_Horizontal… which I guess are actually the same size, just with different labeling methods… sooo, nevermind.
Yeah, I had reasons for doing it that way but they’re no longer very good ones. Maybe I should fix that. The simplest way would be to dive down into each heirarchical sheet, select everything and cut it, then exit back to the main sheet (or maybe one level of heirarchy) and paste.
This seems like a good strategy! Really wish KiCad had tabs!
Hover your mouse over that ?? and hit ‘e’ to open the properties dialog. On the lower left “Library Reference” should be “Device:CP”. If it isn’t, change it (but it is in the version I put on GitHub, so if yours isn’t, it’s been corrupted somehow).
If it is, close the dialog, click the op amp symbol at the top to open the symbol editor. In the list of libraries at the left there should be one called Device. Within that should be an entry called CP. If it’s not there, your symbol library has been corrupted somehow.
If the library reference is Device:CP and if there is a CP entry in the Device symbol library and you still get ??, then something is wrong and you need to get KiCad support (on the KiCad forum I guess).
Huh, looks like it’s turned into C_Polarized? That’s nuts, why would they get rid of a symbol name used in millions of schematics? Well, guess I need to update.
I think I found the reason for the other one and it looks like I’ve been making a mistake that would affect just about all my repositories! Not too hard to fix but it’ll be a bit tedious.
Fixing the polarized capacitors, that’ll be a bear.
Okay… having re-installed KiCad and its libraries from the latest stable version, 5.1.9 (which is what I had before) and found Device still contains CP, not C_Polarized, I looked again at Symbols and saw it says:
The latest complete set of KiCad symbol libraries can be downloaded from the following link:
https://github.com/KiCad/kicad-symbols/archive/master.zip
Stable releases of the the symbol libraries can be found at:
https://github.com/kicad/kicad-symbols/releases
Just be aware you’re using a version of the library that’s later than the official stable release; if you use C_Polarized and share your design, people using the stable release will get ?? apparently until version 6 comes out.
Fixed the dac_ino symbol library problem, I think.
That’s fixed too.
(The symbol libraries dac_ino.lib and EurorackRSH.lib should be in the repository, you can add them in the symbol editor if you don’t want to re-download the whole repository in which they should be added already.)
Okay, sounds good. It’s easy enough to change the symbol. This is my first time using KiCad, they really don’t make it easy! I can see why symbol management would be complicated, but they’re making it more annoying than it needs to be. Made some small progress today, much happier than I was a few hours ago.
I might need to ask ask you to look it over before I send it off to the board house, if that’s okay!
