LEDPanel

LEDPanel-copy

A KiCad project, version-controlled with the visual-diff half of the kicad-git-starter setup.

Using this repo

# save and close KiCad first, so the board is written and the .lck is gone
git switch -c feature/thing
git add -A
git commit -m "Add 3V3 regulator and decoupling"
git push -u origin HEAD
gh pr create --fill

The pull request gets an interactive visual diff of the schematic and the layout, linked from a comment. Each open PR gets a page at https://Alex-Hermeling.github.io/LEDPanel-copy/pr-<number>/, plus red/green PDFs as a downloadable build artifact.

Tag revisions you actually send to fabrication — a tag is what makes "which files did we build?" answerable a year later:

git tag -a rev-a -m "Sent to JLCPCB"
git push --tags

Three habits specific to KiCad

Close KiCad — or at least save — before committing. KiCad holds edits in memory and writes on save. Committing mid-edit captures a half-state that doesn't match your screen.

Commit the schematic and the layout together. .kicad_sch and .kicad_pcb share net and footprint identity. A schematic change without the matching layout update is a broken state you can't cleanly return to.

Don't expect merges to work on .kicad_pcb. Because the files are text, git will merge two divergent layouts and can produce a valid file with nonsense geometry: overlapping footprints, traces to nowhere, silently dropped zones. That's worse than a conflict, because nothing warns you. Branch freely for schematic work, keep layout work linear, and redo a diverged layout rather than merging it.

What's tracked, and what isn't

Tracked: *.kicad_pro, *.kicad_sch, *.kicad_pcb, *.kicad_dru, and any project-specific *.kicad_sym / *.kicad_mod.

Ignored: lock files, *.kicad_prl (per-user view settings), *-backups/, autosaves, fp-info-cache, netlists and fabrication output. The rule of thumb: if KiCad can regenerate it, don't commit it.

Workflows

This repo was set up with --visual-diff-only, so it has no "Repo file check" workflow, no pre-commit hook and no branch protection. To add them later, run kicad-git-init.sh --no-create here.

Latest render of main

These appear after the first run of the export workflow.

Schematic (PDF)

PCB

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