Reference Designs

Copy and Paste KiCAD schematics

KiCAD is great, but it does have a few things that could be better. If you could develop a library of working schematics that can be copied and pasted into a new project, that would be great. You can do that now, it just requires a bit of forethought; creating hierarchical sheets for components, exporting pins, making copy and pasting easy, etc.

Microfire rd reference designs, are just a way to do this more easily. Each design is a single component that comes with KiCAD schematic and PCB files. You can easily copy and paste the contents of the schematic into a new project using a hierarchical sheet for each rd.

rd-ESP32S3

rd-ESP32S3 Schematic

In this example, the relevant components are in the dashed box. You would create a new hierarchical sheet for this component, copy/paste the dashed content and then connect the exported pins in your larger design. There’s some extra headers for turning the board into a modular PCB for prototyping in addition to links to the datasheets and other resources. There’s also a PCB file that shows a working prototype board.

typeCAD

All of the Microfire rd reference designs are available as a typeCAD module as well.