I’m not sure how chrome relates to this. Fritzing shouldn’t do anything to chrome, Fritzing is self contained.
Peter
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No part for Wemos D1 Mini PRO
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Not working plz help
Once you clear the user directories and start Fritzing again, be patient. Although it seems to hang, it is actually downloading new parts from github and will eventually ask you if you want to upgrade. Interrupting this process causes problems.
Peter
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Would love some help/feedback
So, I am super new to Embedded and anything hardware related (I’m in school for Software). I took a pretty basic Embedded course last semester and my semester project was to create a “Smart Window Blinds” controlled with Alexa.
I’m trying to order a PCB, but I’m concerned about a few things. Obviously on a Breadboard you have the power rails, on mine I have one rail with 12v and the other is 5v down from the linear voltage regulator.
• On my PCB design all the GND’S are routed to one GND pin on the Stepper motor driver (MP6500) and then that GND routes to the Capacitor connected to the voltage regulator…is this correct? Should they all route to the appropriate capacitor instead?
• I put all my GND traces on the bottom and then filled the bottom with copper, is this good? Should GND be connected to the GND “circles” that were placed on the PCB after I added the copper bottom?
• Same goes for some of the power pins. Like the SLP on the stepper driver is connected to the VMOT pin and then that routes to the 12v side of the voltage regulator, should SLP go directly to that as well? Should they both be connected to the Capacitor (like GND) instead of directly to the Voltage Regulator?
• Lastly, I do not understand schematics very well. I do not know if they are necessary in the production in PCB’s? Also, are the GND connections correct on the Schematic?
Sorry, I know this is a lot! Please be nice, I’m very new lol. 
Below are my Breadboard, Schematic, and PCB design. (Actually I can only put one pic in a post)
MP6500_blinds_PCB_Copper_Bottom.fzz (69.9 KB)
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Would love some help/feedback
Either way should be fine. What you want to avoid is having two paths to a single ground point such as one trace from the capacitor and another trace the runs across the board on a separate path then rejoins the ground to the stepper motor and I don’t see that here. You can upload the entire sketch (the .fzz file) to the forum then we can download it and poke at it for you. First next step is to run DRC (in pcb view, Routing->design Rules check), this will check the clearances on your board, I doubt it is going to complain but try it anyway. After that you want to export the gerber files (which the board is made from) and check them in one of the gerber viewer programs (I use gerbv from the open source geda project) . Sometimes the board looks fine in Fritzing, but has troubles translating in to gerber format. The gerber is what they will produce the board from so if it looks ok then you are probably good to go.
uploading the sketch is likely the best bet here. It think you are probably seeing solder relief points (as solid sheet of copper is hard to solder things to so it creates islands to allow easier soldering) but its hard to say from the picture. Your power routing looks fine, there is a wide trace to the microprocessor and a separate wide trace to the motor driver / moter (which are likely to cause current spikes that may bother the micro controller). The two traces is the best way to deal with that.
The gerber files are all that are required to cut the board, they don’t care about the schematic that is for you. The grounds look fine, a couple of them are technically upside down, but they won’t care. everything with the ground symbol attached happily attaches to the ground net. As long as all the connections are green (again hard to see in photos) it should be fine. Compared to a request for a new part this isn’t so much 
. If it runs on the breadboard it should run fine on the board.
Peter
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Would love some help/feedback
Wow, thanks for the detailed response Peter! I really appreciate you taking the time to reply, I know it was a lot.
I posted the file for the project.
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Would love some help/feedback
Advise like this is easy, making parts for people generally takes way more time, and learning to make parts takes even more (which is why we tend to make parts for people who only need one or two).
Peter
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Would love some help/feedback
I uploaded the file. I mainly wasn’t really sure what those “red circles” were and from what I could gather they are ground fills. So I wasn’t really sure if I needed/should connect the GND pins to them or just leave them where they are?
Sorry, I just thought of another question. Looks like one of these GND pins should connect to the 5V side. Should I connect it to the GND of the Capacitor or the GND of the Voltage regulator itself?
I read somewhere that your power and GND traces should be larger that’s why they’re wider. So I’m assuming I should just keep everything at the default 24 mil?
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Would love some help/feedback
Well, trust me I appreciate it!! When you say “making parts” do you work for Fritz or a PCB manufacturer?
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Study MBSS In Ukraine
Hi, Yes I want to get admission in MBBS and Ukraine is my favorite country as I had visited there last summer it was really amazing. Please let m know from where I can get information here I cannot find and direction to get contact with you. Thank you !
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Printing PCBs with Fritzing
Peter,
I just want to say thank you for this kind efforts to give hints! I know very well the design rule checker is amazing and valuable and have great innovation in designing. I have some circuit to design and I will print my own very first circuits hopefully. Thank you thank you again for this kindness
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Would love some help/feedback
while I’m well out of my area of expertise here (I don’t do boards all the much), you look to have gotten a copper fill rather than a ground fill. That means the fill is isolated (not what you want). Here is the copper bottom from the gerbv display after exporting the gerber files (file->for production->extended gerber) displayed by gerbv:
You see the fill is completely isolated. You need to set ground seeds, but I don’t know enough about it to tell you how. Hopefully one of our pcb aware folks will provide an answer.
No, wide traces on power are better. The issue won’t likely come up in this small a board, but is voltage drop due to resistance in the trace which increases with current flow. You have both short traces (lower resistance, less of an issue) and relatively low currents. The logic circuits typically have a low threshold value of about .7V, so even a small voltage difference in ground due to high current flow can reduce the low level enough to cause hard to find occasional errors. To beat that you want to keep the high (or in this case higher but not very high ) ground path separate from the logic ground (which draws very little current normally) and you have done that. It looks to me like all you need is to get the ground fill attached to ground (and if you can’t, it likely isn’t really needed anyway) and you should be good to go. Except while looking at the ground pins on the motor driver I noticed a fatal error. You don’t have any connection to VDD (the logic power supply) on the motor driver (pin 11 one up from the ground on the bottom, shown in the part as “flt” but on the pololu connection diagram as VDD which needs to go to 5V to power the logic section of the motor driver.
As well there is a separate ground connection for the logic (as opposed to the higher current motor ground) that should connect like this (I just routed quickly with standard size traces, although this is all low current and shouldn’t matter much, plus the ground fill needs to be redone.
MP6500_blinds_PCB_Copper_Bottom_fixed.fzz (71.0 KB)
Peter
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Would love some help/feedback
No. I’m happily retired after working for many years, and now do what I want. For the last couple of years that has been Fritzing, Making parts such as the motor driver or photon for Fritzing is challenging to say the least (it took me around a year and a lot of help from folks in here to get good at it). I’m also currently trying to restart development on Fritzing (which has currently stalled) so it doesn’t die.
Peter
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Would love some help/feedback
I think you just right-click on the part pin in PCB and set GND seeds. You can click on a GND pin and it will turn yellow, and that way you know what pins to set.
Not that it matters in this case because the frequency in this is too low, but with traces you try to not make corners sharper than 45º.
The convention in SCH drawing is that all inputs are on the left, outputs on the right, GNDs always point down, and "+"s are always above.
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Would love some help/feedback
Hey Peter, first I can’t thank you enough! I greatly appreciate you taking the time to answer all my questions!!!
So I’m actually using the stepper motor driver MP6500 from Pololu. I couldn’t find the exact fritz part for it, but the A4988 is exactly the same size and Pins are relatively the same except for VDD. On the MP6500 the VDD is the SLP pin, the FLT pin on the MP6500 is different I guess it’s for overcurrent protection. Thanks for looking out though!
So I need a ground fill on the bottom instead of a copper fill, but I don’t need to worry about the ground seeds?
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Would love some help/feedback
I’m a bit confused on what you mean by the fill being completely isolated?
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Empty rectangle
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Would love some help/feedback
You have a copper fill on the bottom, you need a ground fill. The copper fill fills all the copper unused by traces but doesn’t connect to any net (such as ground). So while there is a copper fill there, it isn’t touching any traces and is entirely isolated (it is not ground either). The ground fill will cause the fill to attach to any grounds it finds, but I’m unclear on where you put them. I’m hoping someone familiar with ground fills will answer. You could just experiment with ground fills or search for ground fill in the forum search tab as it has come up before several times.
Yes, but you need the ground seeds to create the ground fill so you do need to use them.
edit:
This forum article may help:
Peter
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Empty rectangle
You are wanting to make a rectangular hole in the pcb layer? If so this tutorial may help (as a bonus its author is still around in the forums):
Peter
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Need help designing your fritzing board
Need help creating a board, can anyone help?
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Need help designing your fritzing board
Lots of us can help. Upload the sketch of your board (the .fzz file) using the upload button on the reply menu (7th icon from the left) and explain your problem.
Peter
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