Thank you for this awesome quick review. I wonder if you will post this altium design project to github. I curious how did you create the symbol and footprint for the castellated pads. Do you need to select castellated holes in jlcpcb option when ordering? Thanks.

For many videos I would agree. I do know that anything that covers Altium specifically is going to do me little good. Unless something drastic changes, I will never be able to justify spending that much on PCB software. That said, I'd rather have you making videos than not, so if it makes it easier to use the software you are most proficient with. I certainly understand.

Hello Mr. Philip, Good Day. May I get the 3D step file of the RP2040 you used to design this board?

I just started work and they use Altium so this is very refreshing please keep doing these types of videos as well as kicad. Also will you include the generation of the gerber/drill files in the next altium pcb design

can i use flash chip of esp8266 in this project?

It has always been an art to do it well!

@@theindieg agreed. Some of the old hand-taped boards are absolute masterpieces.

Rp2040 is based of lowest cortex core m0+ which is used on stm32 L0 and G0 series. STM32 offer much wider ranges of cores including STM32H74x/75x series that is also dual core but one is m7 and other is m4.

Very glad to hear that, thank you!

Thanks, Ahmet!

Thank you!

Thank you very much!

Yup, Altium is a hard no for me.

get a cracked version XD I use that

You might want to look into Altium Circuit Maker, it's a free version of Altium, it has a few limitations, but otherwise it looks great, I haven't tried it yet, but it's going to be my weekend project to try it out!

@@EmbeddedEnigma I always used cracked versions when I was younger. Nowadays I try to be a good person, skip cracked things, pay my tax and keep track of speed limit. It feels good.

@@EmbeddedEnigma Why use crack when you have free and opensource software readily available :)

Thank you, Marcus!

Hi Simon, Thanks for your comment. The capacitance values do need to be adapted to whatever crystal you choose, however, things like the exact number/value of bypass caps for these low-speed devices aren't entirely critical.

I believe the resistor is to limit the drive current into the crystal, it's more commonly seen on a 32KHz crystal than a high-speed oscillator. ST has an excellent application note on configuring crystals.

Yes, you reduce inductance because the ground plane (return path to be precise) is always close to the signal and power traces. I recommend you watch Rick Hartley's video about PDN design tips that he did for PCEA. It is available in UKposts.

Only boards you can get in 3layers is flex pcb. In ridged pcb's it's 2 or 4.. and it would be bad to etch away a whole copper layer because you "don't need it". you actually do need it, as the core is so thick on a 1.6mm board that layer2 gnd plane would be too far away from layer4 (signals) to be helpful.

I'd like to know too.

Limit crystal drive current. Look up ST AN2867 for crystal oscillator design guide.

Not really. The specs of this chip are horrible. And for the price point? Alright but not that much cheaper then other M0+ chips.

likely it wont be very pretty at least in the emi sense,

Yeah, I was thinking about making that video again but using Altium instead. Might be a little while before that comes out though.

I make my own schematic symbols and footprints, and use standard packages e.g. 0402, 0603, 0805 and so on. The smaller the value, the smaller the footprint.

Thank you, Renault!

The Raspberry Pi Pico was designed in Altium, and the design files have been made available openly, with no limitations. There is also a STEP file available. See datasheets.raspberrypi.org. There are also KiCAD design files available for the minimal viable board and VGA carrier board talked about in the Hardware Design guide available on the same site.

Check Snapeda, they have schematics symbols and land patterns for many components. Some components are created in collaboration with the manufacturer.

@@sisesoso that was the first place I looked. I shall look again. Sometimes it depends upon your parameters for search.

@@AlasdairAllan thanks for the link to the datasheets page. No obviously STEP file for RP2040 there. I downloaded the schematic and it appears to have been done in EAGLE and not Altium.

With a full license you can keep using it perpetually, but without subscription you will not be eligible for updates. I think ~2k/seat is usual subscription.

The RP2040 has internal PLLs to 'step up' the input frequency.

@@PhilsLab Thank you for the info. I believe it is like the stm32.

If you compare price with other software (Mentor, Zuken, Cadence), Altium is on cheap side (some other offer lower price for base package but when you buy all features they cost much much more).

He didn't compare it to mentor though. He compared it to KiCAD.

Yes it's, and then using power pour on layer 1 and 4, mixed with signals. Just use power traces on layer 1 and 4 if a pour hardly covers anything.

well, you've asked-and-answered there - there is not an advantage to using a part less suitable for what you want to do (eg, if you need a genuine floating point unit). the only time that's not true is when your part is not in stock - ie, is it worth redesigning around a part you can *get*? however: having used these on projects, I'm largely sold on this as a default M0+ part for the things I do (and indeed, a default-ish MCU). It's $1 at any volume, for the chip (like the Pico, the price _is_ the volume price); for that you get a decent number of peripherals, plus PIO, a lot of flash, and a dual core chip; it needs very little support components around it, as the video shows. For me, though, one of the best points is the developer experience. That's a highly subjective thing, but I really like it: excellent, unixy tooling (arm-gcc + CMake + a good text editor and you're set - no horrible Eclipse ports here); superb documentation, particularly for the C++ SDK (can't recommend the SDK manual enough - it's clear, well written, and genuinely useful); great default of using UF2 bootloading, which makes it easy for me to let clients update their own firmware over USB. Obviously none of that's relevant if you need the power/functionality of an M4 or M7 (in STM, NXP, or whoever's parts), but I've found it very, very pleasant to work on.

@@infov0re "a lot of flash"? This has zero flash, you need to BYO (which brings the MVP price over $2/pc, equivalent to higher end STM32F0 chips).

It's a microcontroller, not an SoC like RPI. They are completely different, with totally different applications.

I checked recently and saw they were still in stock.

@@PhilsLab That's weird, because it always says discontinued whenever I check

Probably RevA, is a RevB coming out? and global chip shortage is why they don't have any in stock?

I’m not stopping with KiCad videos, just switching it up don’t worry :)

what's wrong with altium?

​@@cvspvrit costs money and some people rly dislike this

​@@cvspvrThere is nothing wrong with Altium itself. It is a great piece of software. It is however incredibly expensive so not the best for beginners or hobbyists(1 perpetual license is over 4000 EUR or 250 EUR/month).