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Summary
Summary
I noticed that while the commercial Arduino Uno board is famous for easy prototyping and enabling a wide range of low cost microcontroller applications, there are some design methods that can be improved to reduce switching noise and add more debugging features. My "Golden Arduino" design reduced board noise by 50% by using larger decoupling capacitors close to IC pins, reducing trace lengths, and refraining from copper pours on the signal layer.
I noticed that while the commercial Arduino Uno board is famous for easy prototyping and enabling a wide range of low cost microcontroller applications, there are some design methods that can be improved to reduce switching noise and add more debugging features. My "Golden Arduino" design reduced board noise by 50% by using larger decoupling capacitors close to IC pins, reducing trace lengths, and refraining from copper pours on the signal layer.
Improvement 1: Larger Decoupling Capacitors
Improvement 1: Larger Decoupling Capacitors
Improvement 2: Reduced Trace Lengths
Improvement 2: Reduced Trace Lengths
Improvement 3: Avoid Signal-Layer Copper Pours
Improvement 3: Avoid Signal-Layer Copper Pours
Takeaways
Takeaways
Implementing improvements yielded 50% or greater noise reduction seen for majority of measurements; exception was slammer circuit due to decoupling cap far from 5V header (despite being closer to IC)
Use of ground strap helped maintain continuity of return plane for TX/RX UART cross-unders
Extra ground headers and indicator LEDs expedited debugging process during boot-loading
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