PCB ONLY

2×4 Array Prototype — VISUAL MOCKUP ONLY

An ESPARGOS-style 2-row × 4-column phased array, built to see how the scaled-up board would look. This is not a manufacturable design.

This directory is fully self-contained. The working 1×2 design in ../pcb/ is untouched and remains the reference design.

What this is

What this is NOT

• No nets, no routing, no copper pours. Footprints are placed to scale in the correct geometry; nothing is electrically connected.
• No DRC. It will not pass, and is not meant to.
• The clock fanout is drawn as three cascaded 1:3 buffers (IC1–IC3) purely to occupy the right area. A real build wants a single-die 1:8/1:10 fanout so all outputs are skew-matched by construction — cascading adds per-stage delay that varies with part, temperature, and voltage.
• The controller needs 8 chip selects and the ESP32-C3 does not have the free GPIOs. A real build wants a 74HC138 3→8 decoder.

Regenerating

The board file is generated, not hand-edited. Edit the geometry constants at the top of the script and re-run:

"C:/Program Files/KiCad/9.0/bin/python.exe" build_2x4_mockup.py

Renders (written to ../renders/):

kicad-cli pcb render -o ../renders/proto2x4_top.png --side top \
    --quality high --floor --width 2400 --height 1600 2x4_array_mockup.kicad_pcb

kicad-cli pcb render -o ../renders/proto2x4_iso.png --rotate=315,0,45 --perspective \
    --quality high --floor --width 2400 --height 1600 2x4_array_mockup.kicad_pcb

3D models resolve via ../3dmodels/3dmodels/, so the paths work on any machine that clones the repo.

Before this becomes real

The riskiest assumption in the architecture — driving the ESP32's XTAL_P from a clock buffer — is still unvalidated on hardware and is not an Espressif-supported configuration. That should be proven on the existing 3-chip board before committing to a 9-chip board this size. See ../AGENT_HANDOFF.md.