I kinda feel attacked since I just made a memory pcb but on the other hand i also plan on making my own boards rather than having a pico slapped on lol
Thanks for a really excellent video that shows the kinds of practical considerations and troubleshooting involved when going from a design concept to component selection, schematic, board layout, pcb fabbing, parts sourcing, populating the board, soldering, board re-work, and functional testing. You cover a ton of ground in under an hour. I've done lots of similar prototyping work, but not as neatly and nicely as you, and it's always great to see how other people approach the same problems. I also learned I've been pronouncing KiCad wrong. Great work.
When you rework and use the iron for wicking the small round tip is not desirable. You can use a bit of solder wick and a flat blade type iron. Using a temp controlled iron is recommended. The flat blade will act like a wick and pull the solder to it. Also when using a blade tip you place it near the edges of the pins and then pull away. What you are doing is moving the solder to the next pin and that could create a bridge where you did not have one. I used to work as a tech and have done lots of rework. I have used solder wicking braid to aid in exess solder removal. You just have to use it on the edge of the pins and not on top or too close to the chip. 3 second rule applies as well.
Loving the RP2040 so far. Somebody needs to just sell a debugger for Pico. Its cool you can use another Pico as a debugger but as you say it takes up space and in my experience Pico probe actually working is super glitchy and depends highly on how good the wire connections are between the 2.
Not sure I share your apprehension about 0402s. I've never had any issue soldering them, though I do use a microscope. The biggest problem I've had, is that the tiniest twitch on my tweezers, or static, will send them flying across the room ... never to be seen again. At least they're cheap. Other considerations: They have no markings, so it's easy to get them mixed up. And they're too small to put traces between the pads.
I agree, somewhat. I don’t find 0402, 0603 and 0805 to be all that different IF: (a) your gear is set up well (e.g., proper iron tips, solder type/gauge, temperature, etc.), (b) you’re using a microscope (they’re a complete game-changer if you’re hoping to make repeatable, quality terminations on fairly small parts) ** and (c) you have a bit of practice under your belt. Not everyone has a, b and c - we’re at at different points along the path. ** Want to _not_ have fun with 0402s? Solder down some load caps for xtals (along with a bunch of other spec of dust sized parts) “by feel” and then bang your head against the wall for hours, wondering why your processor won’t boot. Ugh. Lesson learned.
Great Video! One question, what do you have to do if you want to make PCBs and built versions available for sale, FCC, CE, etc.? For Hobby and general prototyping use? It looks like no one talks about this.
Not sure why you decided to rework the chip instead of just soaking away solder bridges with a clean iron tip as you did after, but your flux evaporated by the time you pre-heated PCB with hot air gun. Instead look for good gel flux. It won't boil, evaporate immediately and should only liquify at a considerable temp.
To reset the board we can have switch on the RUN pin but in your schematic your have given +3.3v with 10K resistor. Does this needed because in datasheet in was not mention.
first of all great video. inspired from this i also made my PCB. during testing i encounters problem . instead of W25q16 i used W25q08 which is half the size. my problem is i can recognise it in drive on boot mode and successfully able to put uf2 file. but when i connect it to thonny in programming mode it's not recognised. i tryied plugin plugout, restart thony, restart computer. Std pi Pico is working without problem. need your help
Really helpful video! I have a doubt after making custom pcb using rp2040 where we use that new ldo we don't need gpio pin 23 So can we use it freely ? Same for gpio pin 24 Or will Pico sdk interfere
Just imagine me firing a gas oven at home to solder a bunch of modchips :D One day I hear the oven door slam closed, my damn housemate went to "check" what I was doing... smashed everything off the boards, my entire day wasted :(
We have designed custom rp2040 board. But we are facing issue of continue mount even we didn't press bootsel button. What could be the possible issue , anyone help on this.
If you had a 0.5GHz clock, i.e. 1ns "on" and "off" times for your clock-crystal, you'd have a wavelength of 300mm. Ok, perhaps half of that, considering the dielectric of the PCB (so Lambda/4 of ~40mm. "Length matching" of a few mm should make no difference whatsoever, even with a 0.5GHz clock. The only issues could be a large encircled area of the traces (parasitic inductance) or the broken ground-plane (ground-bounce). Your layout looks fine on both counts ;) 30:13
hello, I would like to ask, if you burn bootloader on rp2040? I would like to make own pcb and pay for assembly rp2040 manufacturer, but probably it will be not easy to run rp2040 just by copy firmware
As another commentor mentioned, the RP2040 has a USB boot loader built into the chip itself - as opposed to a more generic Arduino chip/board that requires one to install a separate/secondary boot loader over SWD or serial. This makes the RP2040 act very similarly to many of the Adafruit boards that also support UF2. It really is as easy as Shawn demonstrated. Cool, eh?
How's KiCad compared to the old Altium? Being open source usually means it's buggy. I just learned that you can't run and Auto-update Kicad from within KiCad! That's not a good sign!
Recent versions of KiCad have been very stable and very few bugs. There are a number of things that are not very intuitive, and it is missing some of the more powerful features of Altium (and other paid EDA tools).
This video is so very important for anyone just starting out on developing custom RP projects. Thank you thank you !
Thank you Shawn ;-) It's VERY REFRESHING to see someone who's willing to go beyond blinking F$%#!ing LEDs. Much appreciated.
You're spitting the truth bro!
I agree Richard
I kinda feel attacked since I just made a memory pcb but on the other hand i also plan on making my own boards rather than having a pico slapped on lol
Thanks for a really excellent video that shows the kinds of practical considerations and troubleshooting involved when going from a design concept to component selection, schematic, board layout, pcb fabbing, parts sourcing, populating the board, soldering, board re-work, and functional testing. You cover a ton of ground in under an hour. I've done lots of similar prototyping work, but not as neatly and nicely as you, and it's always great to see how other people approach the same problems. I also learned I've been pronouncing KiCad wrong. Great work.
When you rework and use the iron for wicking the small round tip is not desirable. You can use a bit of solder wick and a flat blade type iron. Using a temp controlled iron is recommended. The flat blade will act like a wick and pull the solder to it. Also when using a blade tip you place it near the edges of the pins and then pull away. What you are doing is moving the solder to the next pin and that could create a bridge where you did not have one. I used to work as a tech and have done lots of rework. I have used solder wicking braid to aid in exess solder removal. You just have to use it on the edge of the pins and not on top or too close to the chip. 3 second rule applies as well.
Excellent video! Really, really helpful to understand how this all works and to see that it's not THAT scary to make your own PCB.
Loving the RP2040 so far. Somebody needs to just sell a debugger for Pico. Its cool you can use another Pico as a debugger but as you say it takes up space and in my experience Pico probe actually working is super glitchy and depends highly on how good the wire connections are between the 2.
They just released a pico debugger. Looks pretty useful.
@@element4element4 that's awesome! Gonna look out for that
Excellent video, many thanks.
I have found that for hand-soldering one could benefit by having larger pads for the 5-pin v-reg part.
Helpful video, thanks!
Good content as usual. I learned KiCad from your excellent tutorials. Thank you Shawn. Cheers.
Me Too.
Crazy.... DIP socket pins were close enough for me. This is definitely something for younger eyes.
super nice!! I have learned a lot from your video ,thank you very much!
Thaaaaannnnnks yuuuuuuu i always get a vid on what I want from shawn😚
Woah, kicad really looks old and white without an OS to provide a proper GTK theme.
Not sure I share your apprehension about 0402s. I've never had any issue soldering them, though I do use a microscope.
The biggest problem I've had, is that the tiniest twitch on my tweezers, or static, will send them flying across the room ... never to be seen again. At least they're cheap. Other considerations: They have no markings, so it's easy to get them mixed up. And they're too small to put traces between the pads.
I agree, somewhat. I don’t find 0402, 0603 and 0805 to be all that different IF: (a) your gear is set up well (e.g., proper iron tips, solder type/gauge, temperature, etc.), (b) you’re using a microscope (they’re a complete game-changer if you’re hoping to make repeatable, quality terminations on fairly small parts) ** and (c) you have a bit of practice under your belt. Not everyone has a, b and c - we’re at at different points along the path.
** Want to _not_ have fun with 0402s? Solder down some load caps for xtals (along with a bunch of other spec of dust sized parts) “by feel” and then bang your head against the wall for hours, wondering why your processor won’t boot. Ugh. Lesson learned.
Excellent lecture, thank you very much, see you next time
Nice Video Shawn.
I think you have to go to make some DIY projects videos like your reflow Oven :)
Awesome video!
Thank you Shawn!
Who's Shawn?
@@pinnkcl0uds the guy in the video
@@maxxiang8746 oh ok- I got this as an ad-
Great Video!
One question, what do you have to do if you want to make PCBs and built versions available for sale, FCC, CE,
etc.? For Hobby and general prototyping use? It looks like no one talks about this.
I have a question, did you have to do an initial flash of the spi chip over SWD, or is it just supposed to work?
Not sure why you decided to rework the chip instead of just soaking away solder bridges with a clean iron tip as you did after,
but your flux evaporated by the time you pre-heated PCB with hot air gun.
Instead look for good gel flux. It won't boil, evaporate immediately and should only liquify at a considerable temp.
Nice job.
To reset the board we can have switch on the RUN pin but in your schematic your have given +3.3v with 10K resistor. Does this needed because in datasheet in was not mention.
first of all great video. inspired from this i also made my PCB. during testing i encounters problem . instead of W25q16 i used W25q08 which is half the size.
my problem is i can recognise it in drive on boot mode and successfully able to put uf2 file. but when i connect it to thonny in programming mode it's not recognised.
i tryied plugin plugout, restart thony, restart computer.
Std pi Pico is working without problem.
need your help
Really helpful video!
I have a doubt after making custom pcb using rp2040 where we use that new ldo we don't need gpio pin 23
So can we use it freely ?
Same for gpio pin 24
Or will Pico sdk interfere
Coming from China, I own RP2040 Raspberry PI chip
sir can i use other flash chip? W25Q128 or W25Q32 chip? Please reply
Can you please tell me what kind of flux you use? It is so much cleaner than mine! lol
Hey Question W25Q16 any of them will be compatible?
Just imagine me firing a gas oven at home to solder a bunch of modchips :D
One day I hear the oven door slam closed, my damn housemate went to "check" what I was doing... smashed everything off the boards, my entire day wasted :(
thanks, very helpfull!
Thanks great video
Could someone tell me What is the point of the pico firmware while the code is already running perfectly?
Go pico yeah yeah go pico yeah
We have designed custom rp2040 board. But we are facing issue of continue mount even we didn't press bootsel button. What could be the possible issue , anyone help on this.
If you had a 0.5GHz clock, i.e. 1ns "on" and "off" times for your clock-crystal, you'd have a wavelength of 300mm. Ok, perhaps half of that, considering the dielectric of the PCB (so Lambda/4 of ~40mm. "Length matching" of a few mm should make no difference whatsoever, even with a 0.5GHz clock. The only issues could be a large encircled area of the traces (parasitic inductance) or the broken ground-plane (ground-bounce). Your layout looks fine on both counts ;) 30:13
Good to note, thank you!
Can we use ftdi ft232rl to program rp2040
nice
hello, I would like to ask, if you burn bootloader on rp2040? I would like to make own pcb and pay for assembly rp2040 manufacturer, but probably it will be not easy to run rp2040 just by copy firmware
AFAIK rp2040 has bootloader in ROM and works out of box
As another commentor mentioned, the RP2040 has a USB boot loader built into the chip itself - as opposed to a more generic Arduino chip/board that requires one to install a separate/secondary boot loader over SWD or serial. This makes the RP2040 act very similarly to many of the Adafruit boards that also support UF2. It really is as easy as Shawn demonstrated. Cool, eh?
@@a1nelson it is very good chip for learning - how to design own board from basics, a little expensive but still possible with easy eda
36:02
الف شاكرا لك سعيده بقراءة الواضحه امنت وجعلها الله حقيقه وظهر الحق ومات الباطل ان شاء الله
How's KiCad compared to the old Altium?
Being open source usually means it's buggy.
I just learned that you can't run and Auto-update Kicad from within KiCad!
That's not a good sign!
Recent versions of KiCad have been very stable and very few bugs. There are a number of things that are not very intuitive, and it is missing some of the more powerful features of Altium (and other paid EDA tools).
Arggh! "C"!?!
second.
first