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PCB Design

A project log for OpenFence - Digital Livestock Fencing

OpenFence is an open source GPS based digital livestock fencing system and web interface, aiming to reduce barriers of using cell grazing.

alex-muirAlex Muir 05/19/2016 at 05:590 Comments

PCB has been laid out in KiCAD, Gerbers generated and sent for manufacturing. The following are renders of the front and back from GerbLook. It is a two layer design, with a board size of 97mm x 57mm.

The design has tried to minimise opportunities for noise and interference. The high frequency components are towards the top, digital and power circuitry in the middle, and audio at the bottom.

To ensure the antenna output was matched to 50 Ohms, Saturn PCB Toolkit was used to design the coplanar waveguide. 50 mil with an 8 mil gap to the surrounding ground plane on 1 ounce copper was determined to provide 50 Ohm impedance.

Wasn't quite as impressed with KiCAD's PCB design tool, not being able to easily stitch the ground planes together and not being able to drag tracks were the biggest peeves. Still for a completely free program it does a good job!

As always if you want to look at the original Gerbers or KiCAD files they are available on GitHub.

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