KiCad 6 STM32 PCB Design Full Tutorial - Phil's Lab #65
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN recommends it as a practical way to learn KiCad and PCB design by following one full project.
What it is
A 100-minute tutorial from Phil's Lab on designing an STM32-based 'black pill' PCB in KiCad 6. It covers schematic capture, two-layer layout and routing, USB, and sending the board for manufacture and assembly.
Recommended by 3 HN commenters across 3 different months, 2022 to 2025.
What Hacker News said
Recommends LeifCarrotson · 2022-10 · on “LibrePCB 0.1.7”
A few months ago, you would have been on Kicad 6 (assuming you didn't pull some ancient 5.0 release from your distro), which I've found to have a great UI. Like all EDA software, the UI is optimized for power users, and therefore has some quirks and a learning curve for the hotkeys, but I would not say that Kicad is phenomenally bad. Work your way through one tutorial (eg. this recent one: [this video] ) and make a quick-reference note for shortcuts, and you can probably be off to the races.
Recommends mlsu · 2024-04 · on “Ask HN: What Are You Learning?”
I'm in embedded also, I started this journey at work doing board bring-up. I wrote drivers mostly, not doing any direct electrical work, but after reading the schematics I thought, "oh wow, so that's how they do schematics professionally," followed by "wait, I can do that!" Before that, I just did a few small things with Arduino. The Youtube channel Phil's Lab has a really good series [1] on PCB design focused on STM32 series chips, that is where I started. I also got a lot of good information in this thread [2] And I got feedback on one of my designs on the PrintedCircuitBoard reddit, which is very active and full of amateur and pro-am PCB designers getting feedback. You can post a schemati
Recommends waerhert · 2025-08 · on “Custom telescope mount using harmonic drives and ESP32”
Checking the datasheet is essential, they usually show the “must-have” parts around a chip. Beyond that, good habits are adding decoupling caps close to the pins, keeping ground solid, and following the reference layout. I also learned a lot just by listening to experienced designers explain their choices, like here: [this video]
Cites mlsu · 2023-12 · on “The Art and Science of PCB Design”
Wow, what a coincidence! Thank you for posting, this looks like a great resource. I am (a very novice, no EE background hobbyist) creating my first design right now. It seems like there are a lot of design rules that are not common knowledge. And in the electronics tinkering "community" there is basically a vertical wall in the learning curve after Arduino/breadboard. I work on embedded software for a living so I understand that side but some of the electrical stuff really doesn't have an easy learning curve. I am following along with this video: [this video] and having an OK time so far. If anyone knows of any other resources I would love to know. And, is there a place, maybe a slack or discord,