Ethernet Chip

This week I spent most of my time testing the networking section of the board. Firstly I tried to run a simple TCP server code on the board to confirm that it is working. unfortunately, I could not get any result from the board. That called for serious debugging and Read more…

PCB Fiducial Markings

This week I tried solving the problem I was facing with putting the FPGA in configuration mode, which I have also explained in my blog last week. The main issue is that after TCPIP_STACK from Harmony Configurator is initialised, pin D0 will not be configurable anymore. I have tried reading Read more…

New task

I started the week by generating the BOM and also all the Gerber files needed for manufacturing of the board. Something I learned was if there are any fill areas in the design, it has to be filled before generating the Gerber files. The Gerber files are generated based on Read more…

BOM & Routing

Routing the board was finished last week. However, the ethernet connection looked really messy and not optimized, Ethernet connections were where I started this PCB design with. Therefore, I rotated the chip and reconnected it again, this time with a lot more care. The connection is now much better. BOM Read more…

Differential Routing in KiCAD

This week I was mostly double checking all the connections and also all the footprints. There were a few footprints that needed to be modified and rerouted. The I/O ports connected to the FPGA were also rerouted, this time using the differential tracks instead of single ones. That opens up Read more…

Routing DONE

Finally, I managed to finish the routing of the board. After changing the width of the board and having to move the digital ports to fit the new board dimensions, I had to redo most of the connections. Routing the board for the second time was much faster as I Read more…

Layout

This week when I tried to open the project, I faced a number of errors. This was caused because we have upgraded the systems at our office and the new version of Kicad could not recognize most of the libraries and models in the project. In order to fix this, Read more…

Schematics Completed

This week I spent most of my time finishing up the schematics. The updated board will have 2 complete SPI and 1 complete UART connection, between the PIC32 and the FPGA. The PIC32 pin availability for these connections can be checked from harmony configurator in MPLABX. You might need to Read more…