This channel will still feature KiCad videos but I‘d like to show other PCB design tools, such as Altium Designer, as well. I believe most of my videos are there to give hardware/PCB design/engineering tips rather than tool-specific tips, so what software I use to me is secondary. Altium Designer is what I use for work and also mainly in my spare time, but I still try to make many designs in KiCad - I like both pieces of software. Thanks for watching and let me know your thoughts! :)
Thank you for this awesome quick review. I wonder if you will post this altium design project to github. I curious how did you create the symbol and footprint for the castellated pads. Do you need to select castellated holes in jlcpcb option when ordering? Thanks.
For many videos I would agree. I do know that anything that covers Altium specifically is going to do me little good. Unless something drastic changes, I will never be able to justify spending that much on PCB software. That said, I'd rather have you making videos than not, so if it makes it easier to use the software you are most proficient with. I certainly understand.
I just started work and they use Altium so this is very refreshing please keep doing these types of videos as well as kicad. Also will you include the generation of the gerber/drill files in the next altium pcb design
Every time I need some sort of MCU in my designs I come back to your videos and follow your guidelines. Love it! Keep it up man. Your videos are most certainly amongst the best!
You are doing really a huge support to RP2040 community . I can't thank you enough. I'm user of Raspberry Pi Pico & enjoying it. I am into extreme resource constrained devices & thinking about designing another board around RP2040. Thanks a lot for doing this. And showing us other tools like Altium 🤩🤗
Probably the best video, or among them, on how to approach correctly to PCB design in Altium. Straight to the point and without missing details. I had to stop and re-watch some parts because accessing some feature with the complexity of Altium, requires some understanding. Repeting the steps, everything goes straight. Great Video.
Appreciate your great effort to carry along. I haven't watched it to two minutes, yet I have never been disappointed on this channel. Thanks for awesome time spare to make things work, . . . thoroughly impacting
You might want to look into Altium Circuit Maker, it's a free version of Altium, it has a few limitations, but otherwise it looks great, I haven't tried it yet, but it's going to be my weekend project to try it out!
@@EmbeddedEnigma I always used cracked versions when I was younger. Nowadays I try to be a good person, skip cracked things, pay my tax and keep track of speed limit. It feels good.
programming and pannelisation for both kicad and Altium would be interesting. i have my own ways of pannelisation but would be interesting to see the variation on how other people choose to do it in both EDA's
thanks for this. i’m planning on building an rp2040 into a g-key m.2 form factor for a modular project i’m working on, so i’ll probably be referring to this a lot early on.
Hey Phil, Your videos are very much knowledgeable and I really enjoy them. Can you do a video or maybe a video series on single board computer like raspberry pi PCB design ? It's hard to find good material on that topic. Thanks.
Phil what happened to kicad. I haven't used kicad or altium or any PCB design programs yet but I might soon. Do you like altium better, just testing other programs or is it that the company you work for changed what programs you use. Some insight is much appreciated since I'm not even an electrical engineer and planning to do this stuff as a hobby. ... Just as a sidenote I absolutely love the work you do here helping others I've been watching your channel for a long time and you thought me some very great/useful stuff.
Hi phil great work..I loved your long videos on kickad , I wish you would do the same with Altium so that beginners can learn from components placing to routing. Anyway thanks ❤️
Nice, as always! Thank you. A bit confusing that Xout is an input and Xin is an output on the RP2040 symbol, thought you got the resistor position wrong for a millisecond.
I saw what you did with the board naming. 😊 These devices are too good to resist at their price-point. I've added them to my existing options of STM32F411 and ESP32 so I can cover most scenarios.
Thank you so much for making this! I'll be frank - I've hated Altium because it's rather bloated and overcomplicated (and very, very expensive), but I think you tutorials might make it easier for me.
Brilliant video, thanks! I'm just about to pull the trigger on making my own STM32 design from scratch - and now this turns up to mess up my brain completely ! 😂
Rp2040 is based of lowest cortex core m0+ which is used on stm32 L0 and G0 series. STM32 offer much wider ranges of cores including STM32H74x/75x series that is also dual core but one is m7 and other is m4.
Hi Phil, I don't use Altium for professional work, just hobby after getting it as a special offer 2 or so years ago. Got a 1 year renewal request for another year that's over $2K - needless to say I won't be renewing especially since this is almost twice the cost from last year and a huge proportion of the amount I paid when they gave me a "special" offer. I should have known better.
With a full license you can keep using it perpetually, but without subscription you will not be eligible for updates. I think ~2k/seat is usual subscription.
If you compare price with other software (Mentor, Zuken, Cadence), Altium is on cheap side (some other offer lower price for base package but when you buy all features they cost much much more).
Does RP2040 require any bootloader to start detecting as Pico board or will it work on the go? I am asking since in arduino boards we have to upload bootloader on a raw Atmega328p before its USB starts operating. Is this the case with RP2040? If yes than can you make a video on how to get the custom board with a raw RP2040 to programming?
Nice overview of the design process. Would be interesting to hear your thoughts about ground return paths for signals entering and exiting via the castellation's. In particular as there is high speed USB signals over those pins as well.
If you ever have the chance to do another Altium video. Is it possible for you to do a tutorial similar to the video "KiCad STM32 Hardware Design and JLCPCB Assembly"? It was quite helpful to me while I was creating my first design.
Hi, I have a question regarding the buck converter part. The board I'm currently working on doesn't have much space on it, what packages for the components do you recommend? Namely, how small can I go? Thanks
Hello, this is a great video - thanks for that! I watched your guide here and compared it to the official datasheet of the RP2040 and some things are different, for example the capacitor values on some things (like the crystal). Since I am not experienced with that, will I be fine with using what the RP2040 guide says? It also says that their example board was tested and confirmed to work. Appreciate your help.
Hi Simon, Thanks for your comment. The capacitance values do need to be adapted to whatever crystal you choose, however, things like the exact number/value of bypass caps for these low-speed devices aren't entirely critical.
@15:48 Is it possible to go over why are you using traces to guard the crystal instead of copper fill with lot of vias And what is the feed resistor for, is it recommended by the crystal/mcu manufacturer? Also, I noticed that you place a line (overlay) under resistors capacitors. Will it create problem during the manufacturing process, ie tombstone.
I believe the resistor is to limit the drive current into the crystal, it's more commonly seen on a 32KHz crystal than a high-speed oscillator. ST has an excellent application note on configuring crystals.
This is probably a really stupid question, but I am teaching myself Altium. How do you make your resistors so small? Mine are huge. I am using Res2 from the Misc Components library Thanks
I make my own schematic symbols and footprints, and use standard packages e.g. 0402, 0603, 0805 and so on. The smaller the value, the smaller the footprint.
@@cvspvrThere is nothing wrong with Altium itself. It is a great piece of software. It is however incredibly expensive so not the best for beginners or hobbyists(1 perpetual license is over 4000 EUR or 250 EUR/month).
Did you make the library entry for the RP2040 yourself or were you able to find it somewhere. The footprint and symbol are easy. Tough for me is the STEP file. If you did the StepFile used in the 3D rendering I rather like the detail of having the PI logo. I have no 3D cad skills yet so this is beyond my capability. I hope to change that.
The Raspberry Pi Pico was designed in Altium, and the design files have been made available openly, with no limitations. There is also a STEP file available. See datasheets.raspberrypi.org. There are also KiCAD design files available for the minimal viable board and VGA carrier board talked about in the Hardware Design guide available on the same site.
@@AlasdairAllan thanks for the link to the datasheets page. No obviously STEP file for RP2040 there. I downloaded the schematic and it appears to have been done in EAGLE and not Altium.
great video as always. can you explain a bit why you use 2 ground planes in the middle with nothing in between them and then try to stitch them together? why not use just one ground plane (3 layer board)? is it to reduce inductance?
Yes, you reduce inductance because the ground plane (return path to be precise) is always close to the signal and power traces. I recommend you watch Rick Hartley's video about PDN design tips that he did for PCEA. It is available in UA-cam.
Only boards you can get in 3layers is flex pcb. In ridged pcb's it's 2 or 4.. and it would be bad to etch away a whole copper layer because you "don't need it". you actually do need it, as the core is so thick on a 1.6mm board that layer2 gnd plane would be too far away from layer4 (signals) to be helpful.
Hi Phil, could you explain why does one need the limiting R202 next to the crystal? I'm fairly a beginner and I see this extra resistor for the first time.
Does Altium have a Hobbyist License, or is this a 30 days trial and 2000 € after that? This looks like enterprise software and their site is broken. If you click on "Jetzt Subscription kaufen" ("buy a subscription now") on the German site you get an error site with "No input file specified.".
Interesting video but I do only not understand what is reason behind using rp2040 it is lowest arm m core available and do not offer nothing what other do not do better. I understand why they designed rp2040 using m0 for first SoC as learning project.
well, you've asked-and-answered there - there is not an advantage to using a part less suitable for what you want to do (eg, if you need a genuine floating point unit). the only time that's not true is when your part is not in stock - ie, is it worth redesigning around a part you can *get*? however: having used these on projects, I'm largely sold on this as a default M0+ part for the things I do (and indeed, a default-ish MCU). It's $1 at any volume, for the chip (like the Pico, the price _is_ the volume price); for that you get a decent number of peripherals, plus PIO, a lot of flash, and a dual core chip; it needs very little support components around it, as the video shows. For me, though, one of the best points is the developer experience. That's a highly subjective thing, but I really like it: excellent, unixy tooling (arm-gcc + CMake + a good text editor and you're set - no horrible Eclipse ports here); superb documentation, particularly for the C++ SDK (can't recommend the SDK manual enough - it's clear, well written, and genuinely useful); great default of using UF2 bootloading, which makes it easy for me to let clients update their own firmware over USB. Obviously none of that's relevant if you need the power/functionality of an M4 or M7 (in STM, NXP, or whoever's parts), but I've found it very, very pleasant to work on.
This channel will still feature KiCad videos but I‘d like to show other PCB design tools, such as Altium Designer, as well. I believe most of my videos are there to give hardware/PCB design/engineering tips rather than tool-specific tips, so what software I use to me is secondary. Altium Designer is what I use for work and also mainly in my spare time, but I still try to make many designs in KiCad - I like both pieces of software. Thanks for watching and let me know your thoughts! :)
Thank you for this awesome quick review. I wonder if you will post this altium design project to github. I curious how did you create the symbol and footprint for the castellated pads. Do you need to select castellated holes in jlcpcb option when ordering? Thanks.
For many videos I would agree. I do know that anything that covers Altium specifically is going to do me little good. Unless something drastic changes, I will never be able to justify spending that much on PCB software.
That said, I'd rather have you making videos than not, so if it makes it easier to use the software you are most proficient with. I certainly understand.
Hello Mr. Philip, Good Day. May I get the 3D step file of the RP2040 you used to design this board?
I just started work and they use Altium so this is very refreshing please keep doing these types of videos as well as kicad. Also will you include the generation of the gerber/drill files in the next altium pcb design
can i use flash chip of esp8266 in this project?
this man makes PCB designing into an intricate art with his videos
It has always been an art to do it well!
@@theindieg agreed. Some of the old hand-taped boards are absolute masterpieces.
Every time I need some sort of MCU in my designs I come back to your videos and follow your guidelines. Love it! Keep it up man. Your videos are most certainly amongst the best!
You are doing really a huge support to RP2040 community . I can't thank you enough. I'm user of Raspberry Pi Pico & enjoying it. I am into extreme resource constrained devices & thinking about designing another board around RP2040. Thanks a lot for doing this. And showing us other tools like Altium 🤩🤗
Great video Phil 👍Glad to see you went with the RP2040 suggestion 😉 exited to see what carrier board you conjure up and what you plan to do with it.
Probably the best video, or among them, on how to approach correctly to PCB design in Altium. Straight to the point and without missing details. I had to stop and re-watch some parts because accessing some feature with the complexity of Altium, requires some understanding. Repeting the steps, everything goes straight. Great Video.
Appreciate your great effort to carry along. I haven't watched it to two minutes, yet I have never been disappointed on this channel.
Thanks for awesome time spare to make things work, . . . thoroughly impacting
Fantastic content Phil! You're firing out quality material like a fire-hose!
Nice work! I would love to use Altium but it's a bit outside my budger so I stick with KiCAD.
Yup, Altium is a hard no for me.
get a cracked version XD I use that
You might want to look into Altium Circuit Maker, it's a free version of Altium, it has a few limitations, but otherwise it looks great, I haven't tried it yet, but it's going to be my weekend project to try it out!
@@EmbeddedEnigma I always used cracked versions when I was younger. Nowadays I try to be a good person, skip cracked things, pay my tax and keep track of speed limit. It feels good.
@@EmbeddedEnigma Why use crack when you have free and opensource software readily available :)
Yep, this is one of my favourite channels
Very glad to hear that, thank you!
2 Videos in 3 days? Nice :D
programming and pannelisation for both kicad and Altium would be interesting. i have my own ways of pannelisation but would be interesting to see the variation on how other people choose to do it in both EDA's
Whatever you do, you do it right. So keep doing.
thanks for this. i’m planning on building an rp2040 into a g-key m.2 form factor for a modular project i’m working on, so i’ll probably be referring to this a lot early on.
It is nice that JLCPCB has Pi RP2040
Hey Phil, Your videos are very much knowledgeable and I really enjoy them. Can you do a video or maybe a video series on single board computer like raspberry pi PCB design ? It's hard to find good material on that topic. Thanks.
Length matching the QSPI signals is highly recommended
Thank you for this video! I've recently thought just about how to make own PCB with RP chip.
Phil what happened to kicad. I haven't used kicad or altium or any PCB design programs yet but I might soon. Do you like altium better, just testing other programs or is it that the company you work for changed what programs you use. Some insight is much appreciated since I'm not even an electrical engineer and planning to do this stuff as a hobby. ... Just as a sidenote I absolutely love the work you do here helping others I've been watching your channel for a long time and you thought me some very great/useful stuff.
Hi phil great work..I loved your long videos on kickad , I wish you would do the same with Altium so that beginners can learn from components placing to routing. Anyway thanks ❤️
You are awesome sir... keep going... lots of love from India
Thank you very much!
Nice, as always! Thank you. A bit confusing that Xout is an input and Xin is an output on the RP2040 symbol, thought you got the resistor position wrong for a millisecond.
I saw what you did with the board naming. 😊
These devices are too good to resist at their price-point.
I've added them to my existing options of STM32F411 and ESP32 so I can cover most scenarios.
Not really. The specs of this chip are horrible. And for the price point? Alright but not that much cheaper then other M0+ chips.
Excellent job dear! 🌹
Thank you!
Thank you so much for making this! I'll be frank - I've hated Altium because it's rather bloated and overcomplicated (and very, very expensive), but I think you tutorials might make it easier for me.
Brilliant video, thanks!
I'm just about to pull the trigger on making my own STM32 design from scratch - and now this turns up to mess up my brain completely ! 😂
Rp2040 is based of lowest cortex core m0+ which is used on stm32 L0 and G0 series. STM32 offer much wider ranges of cores including STM32H74x/75x series that is also dual core but one is m7 and other is m4.
Hi Phil, I don't use Altium for professional work, just hobby after getting it as a special offer 2 or so years ago. Got a 1 year renewal request for another year that's over $2K - needless to say I won't be renewing especially since this is almost twice the cost from last year and a huge proportion of the amount I paid when they gave me a "special" offer. I should have known better.
With a full license you can keep using it perpetually, but without subscription you will not be eligible for updates. I think ~2k/seat is usual subscription.
amazing video, could you include the Bluetooth/wifi component on a future iteration?
Coming from China, I own RP2040 Raspberry PI chip
this is great, thanks for sharing!
Thanks, Ahmet!
Hi, is the schematic available for download? It will be easier to navigate while watching to learn. Btw thanks for the video~
01:00 much more powerful and more expensive
If you compare price with other software (Mentor, Zuken, Cadence), Altium is on cheap side (some other offer lower price for base package but when you buy all features they cost much much more).
He didn't compare it to mentor though. He compared it to KiCAD.
Great video!
Thank you, Marcus!
yay ... did the castellated pads get made ok ?
good video i admire ypie work
Does RP2040 require any bootloader to start detecting as Pico board or will it work on the go? I am asking since in arduino boards we have to upload bootloader on a raw Atmega328p before its USB starts operating. Is this the case with RP2040? If yes than can you make a video on how to get the custom board with a raw RP2040 to programming?
Gold.
Thank you, Renault!
Are you planning to share schematic on GIT ?
Nice overview of the design process. Would be interesting to hear your thoughts about ground return paths for signals entering and exiting via the castellation's. In particular as there is high speed USB signals over those pins as well.
likely it wont be very pretty at least in the emi sense,
If you ever have the chance to do another Altium video. Is it possible for you to do a tutorial similar to the video "KiCad STM32 Hardware Design and JLCPCB Assembly"? It was quite helpful to me while I was creating my first design.
Yeah, I was thinking about making that video again but using Altium instead. Might be a little while before that comes out though.
Thank you for the very informative video. Will you be publishing the schematic and boards files in a github repo?
so did the boards preform well?
Hi, I have a question regarding the buck converter part. The board I'm currently working on doesn't have much space on it, what packages for the components do you recommend? Namely, how small can I go? Thanks
Nice video, thanks :)
Can somebody give a hint on clearance between QFN package and other components? What is acceptable for SMT assembly services?
Hello, this is a great video - thanks for that!
I watched your guide here and compared it to the official datasheet of the RP2040 and some things are different, for example the capacitor values on some things (like the crystal). Since I am not experienced with that, will I be fine with using what the RP2040 guide says? It also says that their example board was tested and confirmed to work. Appreciate your help.
Hi Simon, Thanks for your comment. The capacitance values do need to be adapted to whatever crystal you choose, however, things like the exact number/value of bypass caps for these low-speed devices aren't entirely critical.
Via's on dfn center pad, as these vias will not be tented, what about solder wicking effect?
@15:48 Is it possible to go over why are you using traces to guard the crystal instead of copper fill with lot of vias And what is the feed resistor for, is it recommended by the crystal/mcu manufacturer? Also, I noticed that you place a line (overlay) under resistors capacitors. Will it create problem during the manufacturing process, ie tombstone.
I believe the resistor is to limit the drive current into the crystal, it's more commonly seen on a 32KHz crystal than a high-speed oscillator. ST has an excellent application note on configuring crystals.
very interesting
This is probably a really stupid question, but I am teaching myself Altium. How do you make your resistors so small? Mine are huge. I am using Res2 from the Misc Components library
Thanks
I make my own schematic symbols and footprints, and use standard packages e.g. 0402, 0603, 0805 and so on. The smaller the value, the smaller the footprint.
What are the blue J222 (example) labels? Is it just text? They seem to be different than net labels
Ótimo vídeo. Muito interessante. Abraço
Nice video. Why to use 12MHz crystal, while the RP2040 is capable of up to 133 MHz??
The RP2040 has internal PLLs to 'step up' the input frequency.
@@PhilsLab Thank you for the info. I believe it is like the stm32.
Oh dear... you've gone back to the dark side using Altium... that's a shame because I found your KiCad ones particularly useful.
I’m not stopping with KiCad videos, just switching it up don’t worry :)
what's wrong with altium?
@@cvspvrit costs money and some people rly dislike this
@@cvspvrThere is nothing wrong with Altium itself. It is a great piece of software. It is however incredibly expensive so not the best for beginners or hobbyists(1 perpetual license is over 4000 EUR or 250 EUR/month).
Second this, Altium is a great piece of software, but the only place I can run it is at uni on the lab Windows machines :(
Did you make the library entry for the RP2040 yourself or were you able to find it somewhere. The footprint and symbol are easy. Tough for me is the STEP file. If you did the StepFile used in the 3D rendering I rather like the detail of having the PI logo. I have no 3D cad skills yet so this is beyond my capability. I hope to change that.
The Raspberry Pi Pico was designed in Altium, and the design files have been made available openly, with no limitations. There is also a STEP file available. See datasheets.raspberrypi.org. There are also KiCAD design files available for the minimal viable board and VGA carrier board talked about in the Hardware Design guide available on the same site.
Check Snapeda, they have schematics symbols and land patterns for many components. Some components are created in collaboration with the manufacturer.
@@sisesoso that was the first place I looked. I shall look again. Sometimes it depends upon your parameters for search.
@@AlasdairAllan thanks for the link to the datasheets page. No obviously STEP file for RP2040 there. I downloaded the schematic and it appears to have been done in EAGLE and not Altium.
Hi is it possible to teach us how can we do a motor driver board for rpi2040 ? using mosfet
great video as always. can you explain a bit why you use 2 ground planes in the middle with nothing in between them and then try to stitch them together? why not use just one ground plane (3 layer board)? is it to reduce inductance?
Yes, you reduce inductance because the ground plane (return path to be precise) is always close to the signal and power traces. I recommend you watch Rick Hartley's video about PDN design tips that he did for PCEA. It is available in UA-cam.
Only boards you can get in 3layers is flex pcb. In ridged pcb's it's 2 or 4.. and it would be bad to etch away a whole copper layer because you "don't need it".
you actually do need it, as the core is so thick on a 1.6mm board that layer2 gnd plane would be too far away from layer4 (signals) to be helpful.
Hi, in orderto interface it with 5V TTL do I level shifters or gpios are 5V tolerant?
Hi Phil, could you explain why does one need the limiting R202 next to the crystal? I'm fairly a beginner and I see this extra resistor for the first time.
I'd like to know too.
Limit crystal drive current. Look up ST AN2867 for crystal oscillator design guide.
Does Altium have a Hobbyist License, or is this a 30 days trial and 2000 € after that? This looks like enterprise software and their site is broken. If you click on "Jetzt Subscription kaufen" ("buy a subscription now") on the German site you get an error site with "No input file specified.".
where is the link of the project file
Does anyone know how to label pins as "PAD" like done in this video? I can't seem to find where I set this
WHERE IS THE BOOTSEL?WHAT IS THE NAME OF BOOTSEL IN ALTIUM?
Design files are open source ?
Why 2 GND planes ? is it way better than a 3.3V plane and a GND plane ?
Yes it's, and then using power pour on layer 1 and 4, mixed with signals. Just use power traces on layer 1 and 4 if a pour hardly covers anything.
Man, make a tutorial of making castellated hole like the one on pi pico
Nicee finally an Altium Video!
Interesting video but I do only not understand what is reason behind using rp2040 it is lowest arm m core available and do not offer nothing what other do not do better. I understand why they designed rp2040 using m0 for first SoC as learning project.
It's a microcontroller, not an SoC like RPI. They are completely different, with totally different applications.
where is the source files for this circuit ?
Anyone noticed JLCPCB has discontinued the RP2040?
I checked recently and saw they were still in stock.
@@PhilsLab
That's weird, because it always says discontinued whenever I check
Probably RevA, is a RevB coming out? and global chip shortage is why they don't have any in stock?
What is the advantage of using one of these over an STM32 that fits your project probably better?
well, you've asked-and-answered there - there is not an advantage to using a part less suitable for what you want to do (eg, if you need a genuine floating point unit). the only time that's not true is when your part is not in stock - ie, is it worth redesigning around a part you can *get*?
however: having used these on projects, I'm largely sold on this as a default M0+ part for the things I do (and indeed, a default-ish MCU). It's $1 at any volume, for the chip (like the Pico, the price _is_ the volume price); for that you get a decent number of peripherals, plus PIO, a lot of flash, and a dual core chip; it needs very little support components around it, as the video shows.
For me, though, one of the best points is the developer experience. That's a highly subjective thing, but I really like it: excellent, unixy tooling (arm-gcc + CMake + a good text editor and you're set - no horrible Eclipse ports here); superb documentation, particularly for the C++ SDK (can't recommend the SDK manual enough - it's clear, well written, and genuinely useful); great default of using UF2 bootloading, which makes it easy for me to let clients update their own firmware over USB. Obviously none of that's relevant if you need the power/functionality of an M4 or M7 (in STM, NXP, or whoever's parts), but I've found it very, very pleasant to work on.
@@infov0re "a lot of flash"? This has zero flash, you need to BYO (which brings the MVP price over $2/pc, equivalent to higher end STM32F0 chips).
*0:44* 😱 😭
sir how to work pcb for camera plzz help me make a vedio
first