from Hacker News

Creating a pick and place control board with the RP2040

by scottwick on 11/5/22, 4:46 PM with 23 comments

• by adamrmcd on 11/5/22, 6:36 PM

  I am absolutely loving the author's explanation on WHY each component was selected, placed, and caveats.

  The interactive schematics and gerbers are subtle but very effective.

  Overall a very clear design and tone I really need to follow for my own PCB projects.

• by KANahas on 11/5/22, 8:25 PM

  @theacodes-

  I'm blown away by the awesome inline KiCad visualizations. Did you use any tooling for capturing the layout view so the layers could be overlapped so easily?

  Any thoughts on making a library for this so others can build sites as beautiful as yours? It'd be a great tool for sure. As noted elsewhere in the comments, your documentation is top notch.

  Thanks!

• by bsder on 11/6/22, 2:26 AM

  As much as I love seeing this kind of hardware stuff, the problem with "pick and place" is the vision integration, not the motor control. That's where everybody gets stuck.

  It's not a "pick and place" until you've got the cameras and alignment working.

• by AceJohnny2 on 11/6/22, 5:55 AM

  > Starting from the left, the power comes in through screw terminals (J201, J202). The extra screw terminal is for daisy-chaining power to other boards.

  Sopa-box time! Screw terminals suck. They're just... the default.

  Great Scott had a good overview of some alternatives: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KE3CjZ0BUFo

• by sintezcs on 11/5/22, 6:59 PM

  I’d be happy to read about the software part of the project. How was the firmware created? Which language was used and why? How does it communicate with the host and what software do you need to run on the host?