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Below is an overview of the sections of the PCB:
Stack-up
The ZeroPilot is a 4 layer board. This makes routing the PCB much easier and allows the PCB to be smaller. Each layer has a designated purpose and they are connected through small plated through holes known as vias.
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- Do not route underneath any of the 4 crystals. Layer 2 is not shielded from the RF energy of the crystals, so it can induce noise in the signal lines and corrupt communication busses.
- Make sure there are no large gaps with no copper. When the 4 layers are laminated together in the PCB fabrication process, large gaps of copper can cause the layers above to sag and deform.
- For debugging purposes, it is helpful not to run the complete trace on layer 2. If part of the trace is routed on layer 1 or 4, those traces can be cut if there is an issue with it. If the trace is completely on layer 2 then there is no way to break the trace. However, this isn't a high priority.
Layer 3
This layer is the ground plane. It makes sure all the circuitry has the same ground. Any ground pin of ICs should have a via to connect the chip to this layer and should be near the ground pin of the chip. There are a couple things to note about routing on this layer:
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