I graduated in mechanical engineering but my career path right out of school took a particular turn and I ended up starting to learn PCB design. This lead me down a rabbit hole and the TH-cam algorithm brought me to your channel. Thanks to you and many others, I now work as a hardware designer using Altium to design industrial embedded systems. Thanks again for your great work!
@@randyyuwono3298 "good" is a subjective term and I'm always learning new stuff each week. However with that being said, I started and designed by first PCB in April 2019.
I’m a computer science guy who tinkers electronics for fun. I’m not interested anymore after 10 years in CS. Will switch over my career soon. Thanks for your testimony.
The niche of PCB design might not be wide as millions but please keep making these videos. Trust me, there are people who don't waste a second clicking your video.
Hey Phill, very good content ! i have one tip for you and anybody who see this comment. from the PCB manufacturing POV, it may not be a good ideia to use silkscreen on small pitch designs if you choose to have the board assembled by a machine at the factory. the problem is that during solder paste part of the process, the stencil don't fully touch the PCB if you have silk on it, thus leaving a small gap between the stencil and the PCB. it could cause the paste to fill these gaps with more material and shorting the pins during reflow oven process. it is always recommended to avoid using silk, specially if you have very small components or pin pitch. put the labels on copper instead. Thanks for the amazing content !
As an EE student, your channel is an incredibly valuable resource, and I owe you a lot of my understanding of PCB design. Thank you and keep up the good work. Greetings from Brazil!
I'm a hobbyist and in the past 5 years I've created a number of different PCB's, most being used for simple sensors, WLED, etc. You don't need to be an EE. I start out on a perfboard to ensure that my ideas work, then design the PCB using KiCad and have it made by a reputable company. My PCBs sometimes take a few tries to get right, but it's still easier than trying to wire things together using jumpers. I've got a bin full of "oops", but keep them to remind myself of my mistakes. It's worth doing, and incredibly simple once you figure out footprints and spacing. And 5 boards for under $10 (inc shipping) is a good incentive. Keep in mind that the manufacturers will make EXACTLY what you tell them to make.
You just blew my mind. 30 years ago when I got my AAS in EET I had PCB design and manufacturer in every semester. We etched, drilled, and assembled a 2 layer board. Senior project pass was a fully functional PCB.
First, thanks a lot for all the videos and knowledge you share. It was quite a relief to hear that you weren't taught PCB Design even at Cambridge. Myself, I had my electronics education in the 90's, 3 years at technical high school, then 2 years at a technical college, then 3 years at university level. All these years attending electronics classes. However, none of the courses I attended over these years taught us anything about PCB Design. I learned a lot about designing discrete circuits, amplifier designs, RF/antenna theory, maxwell's equations, filter calculations analog/digital, FIR responses and so on. But never anything about practical circuit/PCB design. What kept me not "missing out" on this was my home lab. I had a genuine interest in electronics as a hobby, and during the years I made my own small circuits at home. It started with a few soldering kits, then developed as I got my own etching tray and blank PCBs with photoresist film on, which I could produce myself. It took years to develop a process for printing traces on suitable transparent paper, UV exposure, dissolving and finally etching to get a good result. Double layer boards were especially hard to get right. But man, that hobby was worth it looking back now. Even if I don't work as an electronics engineer as my day job, it is still my hobby, and I am still able to design small projects from start to end. I don't think I would be able to do that if I only knew the theory from school. In addition, It's a lot easier now as we can order the boards online :)
Thank you for sharing your knowledge and honesty. I'm about to start this long journey into PCB design and I think this may have been the best way to start.
Thanks Phil! It's really helpful to see your learning journey and what benefited you to 'level up' your PCB skills. Really good comments about best practices. I think for new learners, that transition from copying a design to having the intuition of why something is implemented is difficult to navigate without the proper mentors/supports. I really appreciate that your channel helps fill the gap in this space as well!
Thanks, Tuck! Completely agree - without proper mentoring or someone to ask, there is quite a steep learning curve. Hopefully the videos do help a bit with that!
I'm just a CS person that got into this as a hobby, it's crazy that they don't teach this in EE programs. Thanks for the helpful suggestions and resources!
@@chisangamumba2961 Basically when they say digital world, it is more about I0I00IIII0000 as a lunguage that computer can understand/machine language, inside a digital computer all the circuits are made of transistors that function following/understanding that I0I0III00 lunguage and those zeros and ones are obtained from voltage ON =I and voltage OFF =0 supplied to different blocs inside a computer keeping switching on and off at a very high speed(Frequency Megahertz and gigahertz etc) and now that we have voltage you see the reasons for someone in CS to get some knowledge about Electrical Engineering competences whereby because there is a need to know a given part inside a computer needs/operates at this voltage/current and finally the best and genius people will need to put all those skills and knowledge on PCB/Motherboard to end with a fully fonctionning system
What I miss is the maths and knowledge needed to design the circuit. I'm reading "The Art of Electronics" and "Practical Electronics for Inventors" to get started
I'm currently studying EE and we don't have any PCB course either. However, a teacher encouraged us to design one for a particular project. I followed along your STM32 design using KiCad and made my first PCB design a couple of days ago :) Looking forward to your other videos. Thanks for the good content! Greetings from Venezuela!
I've gotta be honest, man. I've actually seen the opposite of standalone PCB designers. A lot of the older EE guys that I have worked with don't know PCB design. They all are used to just scribbling out a schematic on a piece of paper and then handing it off to the PCB guy. All of the younger guys all do their own designs. I've even seen the dedicated PCB guys retire and have their position eliminated. It actually makes a lot of sense because it was a whole ordeal back in the days before CAD when they had to use tape and a drafting table. Maybe it's different across the pond.
Excellent video! I mentioned you in my last video as you have the same ground-up process that I try to convey to my users and you are an excellent resource. I will be mentioning this video and others you create as your videos are quite complementary to the subject I teach. Thank you for making such clear and succinct videos.
@@PhilsLab Of course! You have quite a great selection, and well laid out, so I will be linking to your videos quite a lot in the series I have going. It makes so much more sense to send viewers to places that will complete the idea.
Just wanted to say thank you I’ve been using your videos to learn over the last year and now I’m hosting PCB workshops at my college through a club pulling in over 30 people each time and now a bunch of cool projects with PCBs are starting up around campus! All using Altium student licens
What brilliant advice. I didn't know about Dave's paper before, so even though it was published in 2004, it contains a wealth of advice. I'll be checking out RIck Hartley for sure and other sources. Thanks for making this video.
As mechatronicas student, you are legend and I learn a lot from ur videos, and this video is so helpful because I want to learn pcb design but I'm lost in middle of the ocean and don't know from where I should start but this video helps to find a track to start
This was incredibly helpful. Thank you for doing this, it is always hard to find a consolidated source that provides the information you are looking for especially for a beginner. I have a MSEE and totally agree with you in that current curriculums don't include any PCB design courses. So a lot of it is you learn as you go and by doing. PCB design is definitely a skill I want to learn and get more advanced in, so I look forward to this challenge and to following your videos and recommendations. Take care!
So true, you go through four to five years of technical university, learn design and mathematical acrobatics complex numbers and laplace, and EMC. I remember I had like an hour of PCB design, in four years. Crazy as a junior engineer I had to do layout, and quickly learn that designing circuit and layout the same circuit are not the same thing. Tnx for the vids they help.
Great video I can’t build right now but watching videos on new subjects I’m excited to try keeps me passionate about robotics :) and thanks for putting me on Rick
That's an incredible content. Fresh out of the ME undergraduate with little knowledge on PCB, I happened to land on your channel among others and since then I have never been the same. The design practices that you put across have largely helped me to becoming a professional designer. You are my MENTOR!! Kudos for the content that I can only access as long as I'm connected to the internet. Sooner than later TH-cam will be a school if it's not yet there. Looking forward to more content.
Keep up this great channel Phil! Your channel is one of the most comprehensive and wasy to follow on TH-cam and I expect it to get much more popular with time.
Same here. EE degree with zero PCB content. We did a lot of breadboards in labs, but no PCB. Then again, making PCBs in the early 80s wasn’t quite as trivial as it is today. 😁
Thank you for watching, Alexandros! I'm glad (and still amazed) to see that people do actually want to watch these niche PCB and hardware design videos on TH-cam :)
Hi Phil, I just come across your channel and it is by far the best place to be with regards to PCB design. I have so many ideas however, to bring them to market, it is difficult to find the right information needed to progress. As you said, even Cambridge University doesn't cover PCB design. Maybe there is a little niche for you. But for now, I will enjoy following you on your path to hopefully learn a lot from you. Thanks for sharing
@@PhilsLab it certainly is. I've followed the links you've shared and the books. All of your resources have proven valuable and I also found a couple of engineers on youtube so I can follow it on video too. Thanks again and hopefully I can have a pcb for you to check out soon ;)
Hi Phil, I follow your videos and lessons from long back. Always been great source of information. Due to my poor financial background, I was not able to enroll in expensive course. But your videos definitely filling those gaps. Thanks you and keep creating such awesome videos for all people, who really want to learn. -Kd nayar
Hey Kd, Thanks for your kind comment. I'm sorry to hear about the financial situation. I hope the free YT videos and Udemy courses are enough to fill the gaps. Regarding the paid course, I can offer a $30 discount if that at all helps (code: MIXSIGTHIRTY).
I'm surprised to hear PCB Design is so rare in EE courses. My university was pretty heavy on it with the very first semester having the assignment of creating whatever we wanted on a self-etched board that goes on a magnetic wall (which had copper strips supplying 5V to the boards) and every project afterwards all had some aspect that required PCB design to realize or to even hope to function. At graduation that very first assignment would be activated once more and then returned as a parting gift. It now hangs on my Fridge! ^^ Guess i'm very lucky to have gotten an education that was given by a group that were engineers first, Professors second. These days i keep designing and having PCBs made constantly as i keep learning new things. There is something about your creations coming alive that never gets old. I've also started to teach myself Mechanical engineering so i can wield the prevalence of 3D-Printing and open some very exciting new doors. Currently migrating all my old work to KiCad. Was taught in Eagle during university, but with its limitations and imminent deprecation it would be unwise to start a major project with it.
Are you not required to design a PCB in your ABET senior design? Just finished mine, and designing the PCB was a hard requirement that you couldn't pass the class or get your degree without.
Are you not required to design a PCB in your ABET senior design? Just finished mine, and designing the PCB was a hard requirement that you couldn't pass the class or get your degree without.
Thank you Phil!!! it is really a good video and I learn a lot from your mix-signal design course. PCB designer is an important element of project, while dealing with MCU, FPGA on the board are also necessary. That would be nice if you can also share your experience on this. (I am struggling with it)
Thank you, Marcel - and thanks for signing up the mixed-signal course. I'm currently working on an advanced hardware design course, covering FPGAs, DDR memory, BGAs, and much more. Hopefully that'll address your concerns!
5:00 Speaking from my own experience at Berkeley 25 years ago: Electrical engineering was... _weird._ In our first year, we were taught analog stuff like using relays, passives, and BJT transistors to make an obstacle-navigating robot. If we had even a primitive Arduino, that lab would have been child's play. In the exact same course, we were taught how ICs were made from silicon at the nanometer scale. There were brief mentions by some of the professors about how "you shouldn't do this or that with the conductors or there's going to be weird stuff happening", but nothing that would really inform how you'd lay out a PCB.
Could you do a series on FPGA design using KiCAD? Your Altium-based series was extremely useful, but I'd like to see how well it translates to KiCAD before taking the plunge.
KiCAD version 7 rc1 is now out, so it would be good to see a quick overview of the new version. FWIW, I'm a software engineer, and altgough only one of my clients do their own PCB designs, they use KiCAD.
Hi Phil, I am Final Year EE Student, Part time offering Hardware Design services and I must admit, I have watched Every Single Video of Yours (Incl. Your Guitar Vids :) ). It would be really really awesome if you make a video Explaining. How to gather resources and docs about a project that is completely new to you? I mostly struggle finding the right resources for schematic. Many Thanks
Hey, Thank you - glad to hear that! Good suggestion - I'll take that into account for a future video (part of it will be in the upcoming course as well). :)
Did breadboards, did DIY kits, did some SMD. But now I want my own stuff and it is hard as hell. Reading through endless datasheets and specs, trying to make certain that what you did is valid (my first amp nearly brought the house down in a bad way).
Thanks for the advice. Great video as always! My university didn’t teach PCB design properly as well. They just mentioned 45 degree traces and ground plane but nothing else.😂 I did not know that I can get design review on the sub-reddit before. My design looks really amateur compared to what has been shown in your video so far as I was somehow trapped inside my comfort zone. Progressing by designing development board with more advanced CPU or complex circuit might be good but i still need to find a good reason for those design. Practice could be the best one in my case.
Your university at least mentioned more than mine in that regard :D I'd highly recommend not just making designs for the sake of it. I tried doing that but my motivation just wanes very quickly..
i started with fritzing since fritzing lets you begin a design where ever and they have a breadboard simulation type. So i would 1/1 copy my real life breadboard test setup into fritzing, that gave me the schematic parts and so i would make the schematic and then the pcb. But the pcb design on fritzing is a bit limiting so these days i tend to use easyeda which so far does the things i need it to do. And just copy past stuff from other my first projects where super simple so i pretty naturally fell in to it and so far I find pcb designing pretty easy even the more complex stuff, if you just do it step by step its and keep the basic rules in mind. I like to see vids from robert feranec very nice indepth vids like this channal has.
I think one reason universities don’t offer many PCB design courses is that they are somewhat hard to incorporate in courses. Designs that are not produced aren’t that useful and if you need them for a project course the PCB must be finished at least a week before the deadline, so the last three weeks of lectures can’t really be incorporated either. It’s only really been possible in long running projects at my university. Generally universities also don’t try to prepare you for a trade, but teach you in an academic setting. That is however besides the point
Nice video! There's a step in between ordering PCB's and the manual boards in my opinion. It's DIY routed boards. If I need a quick prototype, I usually just put a blank PCB on my CNC router, and make it. It's not as hard as it seems once you get the hang of it - and even (extremely cheap) CNC3018 routers are capable of doing this quite nicely. It's primarily useful for partial designs that don't have to last. Yes, soldering is much trickier, and double sided PCB's are especially tricky - but the turn time is just a few hours which makes it incredibly fast. Not only that, but it's much easier to route a complex board than making it on a breadboard. That being the case, as you pointed out as well, there's a limit to how complex these kinds of boards can be. One thing that I would like to know a bit more about, and you might know, is what you can test BEFORE sending things to the factory. You can only be so careful... there are so many "rules", especially with high speed design, and everything seems to interfere with each other in some unexpected way. Perhaps I'm just paranoid, usually my PCB's seem to break in unexpected ways... but still, it's good to get advice on this? Or is it just that KiCAD doesn't support things like this, and more professional tools like Altium do? Other than the tips that you give, I notice that I spend a lot of time on LCSC just reading up on data sheets, especially on IC's that I haven't seen yet. Just to get the "lay of the lands". I'm wondering, would you recommend this practice as well? Or do you consider this an utter waste of time? :-)
Thanks for videos, it's very useful, I start to design MCU circuit, what's the most important to interface between MCU with other IC that make me right choose right IC with MCU and about connection between them
Seeing other's progress reminds me to take it slow and be easy on me and not get disappointed! Thanks :) I'm also thinking of starting a company out of an idea i had for a sensor, but I have no techy friends and i'm so lost on where to sell it or how to, and where to get them assembled as it's hard to make boards at home?
I think your channel has been a great resource for me. Your Kicad video got me to switch to it from Eagle (It was a great tool but I hate its integration with Fusion 360). I've been wanting to do my first 4 later board with an integrated MCU, but sadly the supply shortage is the thing that's been hard to really finish a design since its gonna be a long time to get a board manufactured.
Thank you, glad to hear that! I used Eagle before the Fusion 360 integration and hated it I'm afraid to say. Have you checked out LCSC? They've got a large number of MCUs still in stock - haven't had an issue with them.
wow i can't believe even Cambridge don't teach PCB layout in bachlor. I thought that was only a trend in low rank college to hold students in college longer for master.
Even if you have university courses (like I had), you begin basically from scratch if you start in a bigger company. I thought that I know a lot about PCB design, my senior devs showed me, that I know nothing.
Hi Phil thanks for the great video - at 6:42 is lab #11 taken down? tried search and reverse date sorted on your channel and it didn't seem to be there. Was there an update that superceeded it?
I wanted to try and make my own retro handheld but having hard time wrapping my head around how to start putting this is in a pcb design. I got a raspberry pi and was thinking on making a pcb for the actual controller/buttons, but probably doesnt make sense to have both. This vid is great anyway, i will check your videos and starting putting pieces together
One massive step is when you don't use an Arduino module like a nano, instead you use the AtMega328p itself or any other micro, I know I felt very enabled !....cheers.
I am a PCB designer and you would be hard pressed finding a PCB designing job without electrical engineering background. Although at my company alone there are two people with physics backgrounds designing PCBs
I have almost no knowledge about electrical engineering. I studied theoretical mathematics and worked as a software engineer. In recent days, I am also doing some embedded programming in my private project. I learned a bit Kicad, but I don't know what components I should use at all.
My statement still holds true. My favourite resources are your channel, Robert Feranec's channel and Altium Academy's channel. For absolute beginners, I highly recommend your hours long design videos and Robert Ferenec's ESP32 design video. I haven't read it myself but Eric Bogatin, a renowned PCB Design and signal integrity expert, has a book on how to transition from breadboard to PCB design. His other books are great so I think this one is as well. My personal advice to everyone is to discipline yourself and follow through with learning materials no matter how boring they are and FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, DON'T LEARN PCB DESIGN FROM IC APP NOTES!!! JUST DON'T...
amazing videos! Something I have seen a lack of knowledge overall is about custom TTL or LVDs screen interfaces or bridges, e.g., HDMI to mipi dsi. I know most is because of closed-source docs but there must be a way for entry designers to make our boards with off-the-shelve screens without buying bulky bridge boards. I'll appreciate any help with where to start, I've been searching with no luck.
At 3:52 you said something that REALLY shocked me! "... it turns out that electrical engineers USED to do the PCB design work..." I started doing PCB (layout) design work in the late 1970's. This work was done by draftsman (draughtsman) as was the drawing of schematics. I started out drawing schematics on paper for the engineers from their sketches. Then I got into doing the PCB layouts using black tape on clear plastic. All we had were handheld calculators. There was almost no ECAD software or computers to run said software for small to medium sized companies until the early 1990's. Lowed priced as well as high priced ECAD vendors started promoting to electronics companies that an electronic engineer could do ALL of the required tasks necessary from creating symbol libraries, drawing the schematic, simulating, layout the PCB, and document the entire process. In my experience, this turned out NOT to be viable. Maybe you have seen this unfolding during your career. In the 1990's into the early 2000's while I was using the ECAD software carefully and methodically doing all these tasks EXCEPT for designing the electronic circuits, sometimes an engineer would try to speed up the process by taking over the PCB layout process. They would invariably break many layout rules. Corners less than 90 degrees, high frequency signals cutting right through ground planes, differential signal traces going all over the PCB, picking a 2W carbon film resistor from the library and placing it where a 0402 resistor should go and expecting the purchasing department to correct the mistake, among many more. 😞 I left the industry at the beginning of 2005. Now, according to your experience, the industry has returned to having a specialist for each complex task instead of trying to have only one person do ALL of the design tasks. I do realize that "one-person" companies still need to do all these tasks. This is true today as it was forty years ago. The area of the world I worked in might have had some differences from where you reside. I was located in the New York City region. There was and still are many high-tech companies within a hundred-mile radius. 🙂
I've been working with PCB designers for along time (40years) and only more recently I've seen engineers doing board design. So if I see any trend it's more EE's doing board design.
I thought that PCB design/engineering is a learning path in every university curriculum world-wide, I switched to software and web development engineering: it's more affordable (16:40 especially when seeing only senior teaching simple PCB concepts).
Hello! I'm very interested to watch you, can you do a full course on Altium Desigher like you did for Kicad? I would gladly buy it. Another question, can I send you an EasyEda project for evaluation?
Thanks! I'm working on an advanced hardware design course (which happens to use Altium Designer), will be coming out beginning of next year. For the design review videos, I'm afraid the project would have to be in KiCad or Altium Designer.
Thanks for watching, Rushikesh! The "KiCad 6 Mixed-Signal Hardware Design" course is already out via Fedevel Education (link in description). The new advanced hardware design course will be out around February 2023.
I switched from software focus to hardware. I hope I can find passionate EE people to study together. But there are not many around me. Wonder if there is any study group for EE on social media !
Hi Everyone, Thanks Phil for the videos! And it’s really true what you’ve said about university and PCB design 😢. Is there any courses that helps to learn this a perfect way? Like when and why do I use the passive components? Like decoupling caps for example or what are the rules I need to follow when I‘m doing my layout.. thanks for your help 😊
Fantastic! I was wondering if you had any recommendations for learning the very basics of the electronics that go into your pcb? I recently found the joy of soldering by making my own studio microphone from a kit, but I've been having difficulty trying to find a good place to start learning about how it all works. I'd very much like to design and build my own (minus the true condenser capsule), but with the exception of changing an outlet in my home my knowledge is dated to what I learned 20 years ago in high school.
Thank you, Nicholas! For the circuitry-side of electronics, I'd recommend going through 'The Art of Electronics' - that'll teach you most of what you'll need.
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I graduated in mechanical engineering but my career path right out of school took a particular turn and I ended up starting to learn PCB design. This lead me down a rabbit hole and the TH-cam algorithm brought me to your channel. Thanks to you and many others, I now work as a hardware designer using Altium to design industrial embedded systems. Thanks again for your great work!
How many years did you take to become good at it?
That's awesome and quite the career change! Very glad to hear that :)
@@randyyuwono3298 "good" is a subjective term and I'm always learning new stuff each week. However with that being said, I started and designed by first PCB in April 2019.
@@PhilsLab Your name and channel was brought up during my second round interview and the CTO said he also has seen your stuff and is a fan of it!
I’m a computer science guy who tinkers electronics for fun. I’m not interested anymore after 10 years in CS. Will switch over my career soon. Thanks for your testimony.
The niche of PCB design might not be wide as millions but please keep making these videos. Trust me, there are people who don't waste a second clicking your video.
That's very kind, thank you - definitely no plan to stop making these videos :)
You, Robert Feranec, Rick Hartley, and Dave Jones have been the biggest help for me personally. Thanks for all that you guys do!!!
Glad to hear that - thank you for watching!
@@PhilsLab das war dein Ritterschlag und absolut wahr! Danke für deine tolle Arbeit!
Hey Phill, very good content ! i have one tip for you and anybody who see this comment. from the PCB manufacturing POV, it may not be a good ideia to use silkscreen on small pitch designs if you choose to have the board assembled by a machine at the factory. the problem is that during solder paste part of the process, the stencil don't fully touch the PCB if you have silk on it, thus leaving a small gap between the stencil and the PCB. it could cause the paste to fill these gaps with more material and shorting the pins during reflow oven process. it is always recommended to avoid using silk, specially if you have very small components or pin pitch. put the labels on copper instead. Thanks for the amazing content !
As an EE student, your channel is an incredibly valuable resource, and I owe you a lot of my understanding of PCB design. Thank you and keep up the good work.
Greetings from Brazil!
Thank you, Rubem - very glad to hear that!
Greetings. My name is Ruben and I’m also jr and an EE student 😂
I'm a hobbyist and in the past 5 years I've created a number of different PCB's, most being used for simple sensors, WLED, etc. You don't need to be an EE. I start out on a perfboard to ensure that my ideas work, then design the PCB using KiCad and have it made by a reputable company. My PCBs sometimes take a few tries to get right, but it's still easier than trying to wire things together using jumpers. I've got a bin full of "oops", but keep them to remind myself of my mistakes. It's worth doing, and incredibly simple once you figure out footprints and spacing. And 5 boards for under $10 (inc shipping) is a good incentive. Keep in mind that the manufacturers will make EXACTLY what you tell them to make.
Amazing
I'll go into EE next year and been an electronics hobbyist for the past few months, just found out this channel and it's amazing
Thank you, Matan - good luck with your degree next year!
This channel is legendary. It fills the gap between what is not taught in college and the knowledge you need at the workplace.
Thank you very much Phil. I love your videos.
Thank you, Robert - likewise!
You just blew my mind.
30 years ago when I got my AAS in EET I had PCB design and manufacturer in every semester.
We etched, drilled, and assembled a 2 layer board. Senior project pass was a fully functional PCB.
Your comments section is filled with inspiration. I want to switch my career from computer science to electronics soon.
@Thawne1338 they overlap anyway, electronics does digital which leads into programming. Nothing wrong with understanding both fields.
First, thanks a lot for all the videos and knowledge you share. It was quite a relief to hear that you weren't taught PCB Design even at Cambridge. Myself, I had my electronics education in the 90's, 3 years at technical high school, then 2 years at a technical college, then 3 years at university level. All these years attending electronics classes. However, none of the courses I attended over these years taught us anything about PCB Design. I learned a lot about designing discrete circuits, amplifier designs, RF/antenna theory, maxwell's equations, filter calculations analog/digital, FIR responses and so on. But never anything about practical circuit/PCB design. What kept me not "missing out" on this was my home lab. I had a genuine interest in electronics as a hobby, and during the years I made my own small circuits at home. It started with a few soldering kits, then developed as I got my own etching tray and blank PCBs with photoresist film on, which I could produce myself. It took years to develop a process for printing traces on suitable transparent paper, UV exposure, dissolving and finally etching to get a good result. Double layer boards were especially hard to get right. But man, that hobby was worth it looking back now. Even if I don't work as an electronics engineer as my day job, it is still my hobby, and I am still able to design small projects from start to end. I don't think I would be able to do that if I only knew the theory from school. In addition, It's a lot easier now as we can order the boards online :)
Thank you for sharing your knowledge and honesty. I'm about to start this long journey into PCB design and I think this may have been the best way to start.
Thanks Phil! It's really helpful to see your learning journey and what benefited you to 'level up' your PCB skills. Really good comments about best practices. I think for new learners, that transition from copying a design to having the intuition of why something is implemented is difficult to navigate without the proper mentors/supports. I really appreciate that your channel helps fill the gap in this space as well!
Thanks, Tuck! Completely agree - without proper mentoring or someone to ask, there is quite a steep learning curve. Hopefully the videos do help a bit with that!
I'm just a CS person that got into this as a hobby, it's crazy that they don't teach this in EE programs. Thanks for the helpful suggestions and resources!
I think it's a real shame as well.. Even a brief mention of PCBs in my course would've have been better than nothing :D
How do you know what they do in Electrical engineering if you are a Computer Science professional?
@@chisangamumba2961 computer science may have electrical engineering classes
@@chisangamumba2961 Basically when they say digital world, it is more about I0I00IIII0000 as a lunguage that computer can understand/machine language, inside a digital computer all the circuits are made of transistors that function following/understanding that I0I0III00 lunguage and those zeros and ones are obtained from voltage ON =I and voltage OFF =0 supplied to different blocs inside a computer keeping switching on and off at a very high speed(Frequency Megahertz and gigahertz etc) and now that we have voltage you see the reasons for someone in CS to get some knowledge about Electrical Engineering competences whereby because there is a need to know a given part inside a computer needs/operates at this voltage/current and finally the best and genius people will need to put all those skills and knowledge on PCB/Motherboard to end with a fully fonctionning system
I never thought I'd see such a genuinely interesting person to listen to in such a technical field. Man I wish we had some time to talk!
What I miss is the maths and knowledge needed to design the circuit. I'm reading "The Art of Electronics" and "Practical Electronics for Inventors" to get started
I'm currently studying EE and we don't have any PCB course either. However, a teacher encouraged us to design one for a particular project. I followed along your STM32 design using KiCad and made my first PCB design a couple of days ago :) Looking forward to your other videos. Thanks for the good content! Greetings from Venezuela!
Thanks, Jose! Glad to hear that, hope all went well with your design :)
I've gotta be honest, man. I've actually seen the opposite of standalone PCB designers. A lot of the older EE guys that I have worked with don't know PCB design. They all are used to just scribbling out a schematic on a piece of paper and then handing it off to the PCB guy. All of the younger guys all do their own designs. I've even seen the dedicated PCB guys retire and have their position eliminated. It actually makes a lot of sense because it was a whole ordeal back in the days before CAD when they had to use tape and a drafting table. Maybe it's different across the pond.
Excellent video! I mentioned you in my last video as you have the same ground-up process that I try to convey to my users and you are an excellent resource. I will be mentioning this video and others you create as your videos are quite complementary to the subject I teach. Thank you for making such clear and succinct videos.
Thank you very much, Patrick - also for the shout-outs! Let me know if you'd ever like to do a collab of some sort :)
@@PhilsLab Of course! You have quite a great selection, and well laid out, so I will be linking to your videos quite a lot in the series I have going. It makes so much more sense to send viewers to places that will complete the idea.
Just wanted to say thank you I’ve been using your videos to learn over the last year and now I’m hosting PCB workshops at my college through a club pulling in over 30 people each time and now a bunch of cool projects with PCBs are starting up around campus! All using Altium student licens
That's awesome - great to hear that! Thank you, Adam.
What brilliant advice. I didn't know about Dave's paper before, so even though it was published in 2004, it contains a wealth of advice. I'll be checking out RIck Hartley for sure and other sources. Thanks for making this video.
I recently discovered this channel and as an indian Electronics and CS engineer this is THE best channel I have come accross period
As mechatronicas student, you are legend and I learn a lot from ur videos, and this video is so helpful because I want to learn pcb design but I'm lost in middle of the ocean and don't know from where I should start but this video helps to find a track to start
Thank you! Glad to hear that - good luck on your journey :)
This was incredibly helpful. Thank you for doing this, it is always hard to find a consolidated source that provides the information you are looking for especially for a beginner. I have a MSEE and totally agree with you in that current curriculums don't include any PCB design courses. So a lot of it is you learn as you go and by doing. PCB design is definitely a skill I want to learn and get more advanced in, so I look forward to this challenge and to following your videos and recommendations. Take care!
Brilliant job Phil always learn so much from your detailed tutorials. This is a great resource for getting into PCB Design.
Thank you very much, Kevin!
@@PhilsLab pleasure!
So true, you go through four to five years of technical university, learn design and mathematical acrobatics complex numbers and laplace, and EMC. I remember I had like an hour of PCB design, in four years. Crazy as a junior engineer I had to do layout, and quickly learn that designing circuit and layout the same circuit are not the same thing. Tnx for the vids they help.
Yeah, pretty sad.. They didn't even mention PCB design in my degree :( :D
Great video I can’t build right now but watching videos on new subjects I’m excited to try keeps me passionate about robotics :) and thanks for putting me on Rick
Thank you this is amazing, I am electronics hoppiest and I did many pcbs Thanks to people like you 😊
That's an incredible content. Fresh out of the ME undergraduate with little knowledge on PCB, I happened to land on your channel among others and since then I have never been the same. The design practices that you put across have largely helped me to becoming a professional designer. You are my MENTOR!! Kudos for the content that I can only access as long as I'm connected to the internet. Sooner than later TH-cam will be a school if it's not yet there.
Looking forward to more content.
Thank you very much, Silvester. I'm glad these videos are proving to be useful - many more to come!
Keep up this great channel Phil! Your channel is one of the most comprehensive and wasy to follow on TH-cam and I expect it to get much more popular with time.
Thank you very much!
Same here. EE degree with zero PCB content. We did a lot of breadboards in labs, but no PCB. Then again, making PCBs in the early 80s wasn’t quite as trivial as it is today. 😁
Thank you again for making these videos. There is something really noble in providing for free knowledge that is so precious.
Thank you for watching, Alexandros! I'm glad (and still amazed) to see that people do actually want to watch these niche PCB and hardware design videos on TH-cam :)
Hi Phil, I just come across your channel and it is by far the best place to be with regards to PCB design. I have so many ideas however, to bring them to market, it is difficult to find the right information needed to progress. As you said, even Cambridge University doesn't cover PCB design. Maybe there is a little niche for you.
But for now, I will enjoy following you on your path to hopefully learn a lot from you. Thanks for sharing
Hey Mike, Thank you for your kind comment! Glad to hear you found the channel. Hopefully the videos here should be enough to get a product prototype!
@@PhilsLab it certainly is. I've followed the links you've shared and the books. All of your resources have proven valuable and I also found a couple of engineers on youtube so I can follow it on video too.
Thanks again and hopefully I can have a pcb for you to check out soon ;)
Hi Phil,
I follow your videos and lessons from long back. Always been great source of information. Due to my poor financial background, I was not able to enroll in expensive course. But your videos definitely filling those gaps. Thanks you and keep creating such awesome videos for all people, who really want to learn.
-Kd nayar
Hey Kd,
Thanks for your kind comment. I'm sorry to hear about the financial situation. I hope the free YT videos and Udemy courses are enough to fill the gaps.
Regarding the paid course, I can offer a $30 discount if that at all helps (code: MIXSIGTHIRTY).
Great tips! I love the references, they will be incredibly useful!
Thanks Phil! Really inspiring video. Currently at Cam in my 4th year with no PCB experience. This is about to change!
Thanks! Good luck with the tripos and your MEng project. Shame the degree content at Cam is slightly useless 😅
I'm surprised to hear PCB Design is so rare in EE courses. My university was pretty heavy on it with the very first semester having the assignment of creating whatever we wanted on a self-etched board that goes on a magnetic wall (which had copper strips supplying 5V to the boards) and every project afterwards all had some aspect that required PCB design to realize or to even hope to function. At graduation that very first assignment would be activated once more and then returned as a parting gift. It now hangs on my Fridge! ^^
Guess i'm very lucky to have gotten an education that was given by a group that were engineers first, Professors second.
These days i keep designing and having PCBs made constantly as i keep learning new things. There is something about your creations coming alive that never gets old. I've also started to teach myself Mechanical engineering so i can wield the prevalence of 3D-Printing and open some very exciting new doors. Currently migrating all my old work to KiCad. Was taught in Eagle during university, but with its limitations and imminent deprecation it would be unwise to start a major project with it.
Just when we needed this!
Currently as a EE student, always felt this lack in the curriculum, but surprised even cambridge doesnt include this
Are you not required to design a PCB in your ABET senior design? Just finished mine, and designing the PCB was a hard requirement that you couldn't pass the class or get your degree without.
Are you not required to design a PCB in your ABET senior design? Just finished mine, and designing the PCB was a hard requirement that you couldn't pass the class or get your degree without.
Yeah, Cambridge - in any of their engineering courses - was far too theoretical. Basically, I did a maths degree.. :(
@@tissuepaper9962 ah, nice
Though, idea is to offer it as a course in university
Dave Jones’ PDF is exactly what I was looking for. Thank you.
Thank you Phil!!! it is really a good video and I learn a lot from your mix-signal design course.
PCB designer is an important element of project, while dealing with MCU, FPGA on the board are also necessary. That would be nice if you can also share your experience on this. (I am struggling with it)
Thank you, Marcel - and thanks for signing up the mixed-signal course. I'm currently working on an advanced hardware design course, covering FPGAs, DDR memory, BGAs, and much more. Hopefully that'll address your concerns!
5:00 Speaking from my own experience at Berkeley 25 years ago:
Electrical engineering was... _weird._ In our first year, we were taught analog stuff like using relays, passives, and BJT transistors to make an obstacle-navigating robot. If we had even a primitive Arduino, that lab would have been child's play. In the exact same course, we were taught how ICs were made from silicon at the nanometer scale. There were brief mentions by some of the professors about how "you shouldn't do this or that with the conductors or there's going to be weird stuff happening", but nothing that would really inform how you'd lay out a PCB.
Thanks for this! Your channel has been very helpful, and it’s highly appreciated 🙏
Thank you for watching!
Very useful, as ever. Greetings from icy Cambridge.
Thank you! Greetings from Germany :)
Could you do a series on FPGA design using KiCAD? Your Altium-based series was extremely useful, but I'd like to see how well it translates to KiCAD before taking the plunge.
I would love to see this. Unfortunately, I'm a pauper that can't afford another car lease just to learn Altium in my free time. 🤣
@@youknowitsalllove Right?! I WOULD LOVE Altium! 🥺 But I also like food and clothes and something resembling a roof over my head!
KiCAD version 7 rc1 is now out, so it would be good to see a quick overview of the new version. FWIW, I'm a software engineer, and altgough only one of my clients do their own PCB designs, they use KiCAD.
Do you design PCBs?
You are an Angel wrapped in human flesh for these lessons!
I love your videos! Please keep doing what you are doing. It is inspiring and I have learned so much!
Thank you very much! Many more videos to come :)
Finally a really good introduction to this!
Hi Phil, I am Final Year EE Student, Part time offering Hardware Design services and I must admit, I have watched Every Single Video of Yours (Incl. Your Guitar Vids :) ).
It would be really really awesome if you make a video Explaining.
How to gather resources and docs about a project that is completely new to you? I mostly struggle finding the right resources for schematic.
Many Thanks
Hey, Thank you - glad to hear that! Good suggestion - I'll take that into account for a future video (part of it will be in the upcoming course as well). :)
Did breadboards, did DIY kits, did some SMD.
But now I want my own stuff and it is hard as hell. Reading through endless datasheets and specs, trying to make certain that what you did is valid (my first amp nearly brought the house down in a bad way).
really excellent, you break it down to the perfect level of detail. Thanks!
Another great video. Sharing of resources is always a plus!
Thank you very much, Biko!
I’m building Ben Eater’s 65C02 project and cutting and stripping all the wires has me wanting to skip straight to PCB design
Keep up the fantastic work, and please keep those videos coming. You're a real rockstar in the EE community! Cheers mate
Thank u very much
Very informative... your journey teaches young inspiring designers a path to follow
Thank you, Jawwad!
amazing introduction. very insightful
Thanks for the advice. Great video as always! My university didn’t teach PCB design properly as well. They just mentioned 45 degree traces and ground plane but nothing else.😂
I did not know that I can get design review on the sub-reddit before. My design looks really amateur compared to what has been shown in your video so far as I was somehow trapped inside my comfort zone. Progressing by designing development board with more advanced CPU or complex circuit might be good but i still need to find a good reason for those design. Practice could be the best one in my case.
Your university at least mentioned more than mine in that regard :D
I'd highly recommend not just making designs for the sake of it. I tried doing that but my motivation just wanes very quickly..
You are doing gods work
Thanks!
As an EE student, we had no PC design course. Had to teach myself how to do PCBs.
Exactly same here :(
i started with fritzing since fritzing lets you begin a design where ever and they have a breadboard simulation type. So i would 1/1 copy my real life breadboard test setup into fritzing, that gave me the schematic parts and so i would make the schematic and then the pcb. But the pcb design on fritzing is a bit limiting so these days i tend to use easyeda which so far does the things i need it to do. And just copy past stuff from other my first projects where super simple so i pretty naturally fell in to it and so far I find pcb designing pretty easy even the more complex stuff, if you just do it step by step its and keep the basic rules in mind. I like to see vids from robert feranec very nice indepth vids like this channal has.
I learn PCB design with your videos
Great video Phil!
Thanks, Federico!
I think one reason universities don’t offer many PCB design courses is that they are somewhat hard to incorporate in courses. Designs that are not produced aren’t that useful and if you need them for a project course the PCB must be finished at least a week before the deadline, so the last three weeks of lectures can’t really be incorporated either. It’s only really been possible in long running projects at my university.
Generally universities also don’t try to prepare you for a trade, but teach you in an academic setting. That is however besides the point
Great information!!
Nice video!
There's a step in between ordering PCB's and the manual boards in my opinion. It's DIY routed boards. If I need a quick prototype, I usually just put a blank PCB on my CNC router, and make it. It's not as hard as it seems once you get the hang of it - and even (extremely cheap) CNC3018 routers are capable of doing this quite nicely. It's primarily useful for partial designs that don't have to last. Yes, soldering is much trickier, and double sided PCB's are especially tricky - but the turn time is just a few hours which makes it incredibly fast. Not only that, but it's much easier to route a complex board than making it on a breadboard. That being the case, as you pointed out as well, there's a limit to how complex these kinds of boards can be.
One thing that I would like to know a bit more about, and you might know, is what you can test BEFORE sending things to the factory. You can only be so careful... there are so many "rules", especially with high speed design, and everything seems to interfere with each other in some unexpected way. Perhaps I'm just paranoid, usually my PCB's seem to break in unexpected ways... but still, it's good to get advice on this? Or is it just that KiCAD doesn't support things like this, and more professional tools like Altium do?
Other than the tips that you give, I notice that I spend a lot of time on LCSC just reading up on data sheets, especially on IC's that I haven't seen yet. Just to get the "lay of the lands". I'm wondering, would you recommend this practice as well? Or do you consider this an utter waste of time? :-)
I find KiCad pcb design tutorials very helpfull. I can’t afford Altium as a hobbyist.
Thanks for videos, it's very useful, I start to design MCU circuit, what's the most important to interface between MCU with other IC that make me right choose right IC with MCU and about connection between them
I still had and will learn from you Sir. THX
Danke, Harald! :)
The sentence at 8.30 was enough for a sub for me. 👍
Thanks for so many highly educational content, so to speak. :)
Thank you for watching :)
Seeing other's progress reminds me to take it slow and be easy on me and not get disappointed! Thanks :)
I'm also thinking of starting a company out of an idea i had for a sensor, but I have no techy friends and i'm so lost on where to sell it or how to, and where to get them assembled as it's hard to make boards at home?
Nice info, well done, thanks for sharing it with us :)
I LOVE being an Electronics Engineer by trade. It just sucks that it appears to be (at least in Australia) such an underpaid industry.
Don't tell me Electronics Engineers are underpaid in Australia! 😢
I think your channel has been a great resource for me. Your Kicad video got me to switch to it from Eagle (It was a great tool but I hate its integration with Fusion 360). I've been wanting to do my first 4 later board with an integrated MCU, but sadly the supply shortage is the thing that's been hard to really finish a design since its gonna be a long time to get a board manufactured.
Thank you, glad to hear that! I used Eagle before the Fusion 360 integration and hated it I'm afraid to say. Have you checked out LCSC? They've got a large number of MCUs still in stock - haven't had an issue with them.
@@PhilsLab JLCPB is my usual fab house and sadly they are out too. According to OctoPart almost every supplier is out right now until next fall :(
Thanks a lot for your valuable infos that you provide ❤❤
What do we need Universities for when we have Phil's Lab?
I graduated with a degree in Electrical Engineering in 2019 and I still haven’t used my degree. I think it’s time I remedy that.
What field do you work in?
wow i can't believe even Cambridge don't teach PCB layout in bachlor. I thought that was only a trend in low rank college to hold students in college longer for master.
Even if you have university courses (like I had), you begin basically from scratch if you start in a bigger company. I thought that I know a lot about PCB design, my senior devs showed me, that I know nothing.
@@maxhouseman3129 "Senior Devs"? 😳
Hi Phil thanks for the great video - at 6:42 is lab #11 taken down? tried search and reverse date sorted on your channel and it didn't seem to be there. Was there an update that superceeded it?
th-cam.com/video/C7-8nUU6e3E/w-d-xo.html&ab_channel=Phil%E2%80%99sLab
Thanks Phil, you're the best
Thank you!
I wanted to try and make my own retro handheld but having hard time wrapping my head around how to start putting this is in a pcb design. I got a raspberry pi and was thinking on making a pcb for the actual controller/buttons, but probably doesnt make sense to have both. This vid is great anyway, i will check your videos and starting putting pieces together
Great video! Lots of interesting insights
Thanks!
Thank you so much Phill.
Thank you for watching!
One massive step is when you don't use an Arduino module like a nano, instead you use the AtMega328p itself or any other micro, I know I felt very enabled !....cheers.
Exactly - that was one of my first 'breakthrough' moments! Thanks, Andy.
I am a PCB designer and you would be hard pressed finding a PCB designing job without electrical engineering background. Although at my company alone there are two people with physics backgrounds designing PCBs
I have almost no knowledge about electrical engineering. I studied theoretical mathematics and worked as a software engineer. In recent days, I am also doing some embedded programming in my private project. I learned a bit Kicad, but I don't know what components I should use at all.
Great video, didn't complete it yet but I don't need to be an oracle to know.
Thank you, Khadem!
My statement still holds true.
My favourite resources are your channel, Robert Feranec's channel and Altium Academy's channel. For absolute beginners, I highly recommend your hours long design videos and Robert Ferenec's ESP32 design video. I haven't read it myself but Eric Bogatin, a renowned PCB Design and signal integrity expert, has a book on how to transition from breadboard to PCB design. His other books are great so I think this one is as well.
My personal advice to everyone is to discipline yourself and follow through with learning materials no matter how boring they are and FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, DON'T LEARN PCB DESIGN FROM IC APP NOTES!!! JUST DON'T...
amazing videos! Something I have seen a lack of knowledge overall is about custom TTL or LVDs screen interfaces or bridges, e.g., HDMI to mipi dsi. I know most is because of closed-source docs but there must be a way for entry designers to make our boards with off-the-shelve screens without buying bulky bridge boards. I'll appreciate any help with where to start, I've been searching with no luck.
At 3:52 you said something that REALLY shocked me! "... it turns out that electrical engineers USED to do the PCB design work..."
I started doing PCB (layout) design work in the late 1970's. This work was done by draftsman (draughtsman) as was the drawing of schematics. I started out drawing schematics on paper for the engineers from their sketches. Then I got into doing the PCB layouts using black tape on clear plastic. All we had were handheld calculators.
There was almost no ECAD software or computers to run said software for small to medium sized companies until the early 1990's.
Lowed priced as well as high priced ECAD vendors started promoting to electronics companies that an electronic engineer could do ALL of the required tasks necessary from creating symbol libraries, drawing the schematic, simulating, layout the PCB, and document the entire process.
In my experience, this turned out NOT to be viable. Maybe you have seen this unfolding during your career.
In the 1990's into the early 2000's while I was using the ECAD software carefully and methodically doing all these tasks EXCEPT for designing the electronic circuits, sometimes an engineer would try to speed up the process by taking over the PCB layout process. They would invariably break many layout rules. Corners less than 90 degrees, high frequency signals cutting right through ground planes, differential signal traces going all over the PCB, picking a 2W carbon film resistor from the library and placing it where a 0402 resistor should go and expecting the purchasing department to correct the mistake, among many more. 😞
I left the industry at the beginning of 2005.
Now, according to your experience, the industry has returned to having a specialist for each complex task instead of trying to have only one person do ALL of the design tasks.
I do realize that "one-person" companies still need to do all these tasks. This is true today as it was forty years ago.
The area of the world I worked in might have had some differences from where you reside. I was located in the New York City region. There was and still are many high-tech companies within a hundred-mile radius.
🙂
I've been working with PCB designers for along time (40years) and only more recently I've seen engineers doing board design. So if I see any trend it's more EE's doing board design.
I thought that PCB design/engineering is a learning path in every university curriculum world-wide, I switched to software and web development engineering: it's more affordable (16:40 especially when seeing only senior teaching simple PCB concepts).
I remember the time when it was an alcohol marker or masking tape on pcb and HCl and H2O2. Fun times.
What would you recommend for learning electrical engineering?
The Art of Electronics or an EE degree. In any case, practical implementation and practice.
Hello! I'm very interested to watch you, can you do a full course on Altium Desigher like you did for Kicad? I would gladly buy it. Another question, can I send you an EasyEda project for evaluation?
Thanks! I'm working on an advanced hardware design course (which happens to use Altium Designer), will be coming out beginning of next year. For the design review videos, I'm afraid the project would have to be in KiCad or Altium Designer.
Can we know when your course would be available?
And thanks for your videos man!
Thanks for watching, Rushikesh! The "KiCad 6 Mixed-Signal Hardware Design" course is already out via Fedevel Education (link in description). The new advanced hardware design course will be out around February 2023.
@@PhilsLab Okay. And again thanks! I really appreciate your work. Looking forward for 'advanced hardware design' course.
Really thank you
Awesome would love to see a beginner course from you! Would even pay for it 99$
I switched from software focus to hardware. I hope I can find passionate EE people to study together. But there are not many around me. Wonder if there is any study group for EE on social media !
Hi Everyone,
Thanks Phil for the videos!
And it’s really true what you’ve said about university and PCB design 😢.
Is there any courses that helps to learn this a perfect way?
Like when and why do I use the passive components? Like decoupling caps for example or what are the rules I need to follow when I‘m doing my layout..
thanks for your help 😊
Fantastic! I was wondering if you had any recommendations for learning the very basics of the electronics that go into your pcb? I recently found the joy of soldering by making my own studio microphone from a kit, but I've been having difficulty trying to find a good place to start learning about how it all works. I'd very much like to design and build my own (minus the true condenser capsule), but with the exception of changing an outlet in my home my knowledge is dated to what I learned 20 years ago in high school.
Thank you, Nicholas! For the circuitry-side of electronics, I'd recommend going through 'The Art of Electronics' - that'll teach you most of what you'll need.