KiCad Adventures - The "I Did 1 Out of 300" Moment

After fixing the problems on the previous revision of the Smart LED board, I went on making some improvements on the circuit and schematic itself.
With some elbow grease (and tons of swearing), I managed to fix everything.

Schematic escaping the document boundary is not a part of the improvement.

As you can see, I've replaced nearly 80% of wiring with proper symbols to aid the making of the circuit.

Also, the capacitors are here.

I implemented a way to connect everything without ever using vias or jumper wires.

(About the mashed up traces near the bottom right corner -- it was a rogue plated logo)

Success!

The file is OSHPark compatible, dual sided board is recommended (for pin stability) but you can get away with single sided board too.

Project is at https://github.com/UnforeseenOcean/PartyMachine

KiCad Adventures - The "Now What?" Moment

I was making the LED display board for the Bluetooth speaker project.

The LED used in this project -- commonly referred to as "Neopixels" for being "new pixels" because they're intelligent in a way -- almost requires a small capacitor (0.1 microfarads) in order to function without malfunctions and glitches.

The problem isn't that it needs those things, the problem is that I freaking forgot to put the damn thing in the first place.

Uh-oh.

It's 8*8 pixel display, so there are 64 LEDs. The power line is almost guaranteed to be unstable.

Why didn't I catch that from the start, you ask? This is why.

I read the datasheet too late.

(Kids, this is why you should always read the fucking datasheet before stepping into the muck!)

FUCK.

I caught this error at THIS stage: 

Well, shit. Looks like our trip to the park is not only unpaved, but it's full of rocks and bumps. And our car is running on donut tires.

Anyway, the project can be viewed and cloned at:
https://github.com/UnforeseenOcean/PartyMachine