pcb - part 2.
KiCad woes.
So I had drawn a schematic on paper, found a tutorial about KiCad and started going through it.
And what a PITA this program is. Compared to KiCad, circuitjs is a pinnacle of UX design. Clearly, KiCad was designed by committee of open-source engineers (note the two EEs), who were high on exhaust fumes. But it's free so...
I've redrawn the circuit, that worked. But when I tried to assign the footprints the program kept crashing. I did google for help, but to no avail. I didn't want to spent whole evening trying to compile the program from sources and I also didn't want to upgrade from testing, so I tried KiCad from Ubuntu at work (which is 4.0.2 and not 4.0.5) and that was OK.
Also: I found out that there are backports of KiCad 5 from testing to stretch (stable).
When I watched further videos about designing the PCB I found out that it is not automated at all! You just have to drag the paths along the board by yourself (and also: I found out where the game "planarity" came from - at the beginning all the footprints are put at the same point, connected with "air wires", and you have to untangle them and arrange them along the board, with as little number of wire crossing as possible).
At this point I spent so much time with trying to get KiCad working and figuring out editor quirks it would be quicker to design it on paper and solder it on perf-board.
And I haven't yet started with footprint editor (I have to find out what kind of jacks I'll be using and their dimensions - 3.5 mm audio jacks and barrel jacks for power).
But I wanted this so let's not make it into more work that it actually is.
Next time: more PCB design.