cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/5751732

I posted this to someone else’s Microcontroller Lemmy, but I want to see how many people at Lemmy.world might be interested in this kind of material too

In my most recent “Beginner Series” post, I classified skills from Tier0 through Tier4. This Tier4-level talk is about how to think of PCB-layout at the most complex levels, thinking about the precise forms of electricity and why-and-how it creates EMI fields, almost like an antenna at times. (Or perhaps: more like a capacitor when these waves travel across a PCB).

This video covers proper “grounding”, or perhaps more accurately, proper “reference planes” where the electrical field between signal-and-return current can be defined. Thinking in terms of both signal-current and return-current minimizes the EMI (aka: antenna-like radiation) from coming off your PCBs. This is more of a problem of high-speed circuits and therefore I rate it as “Tier 4”.