Using KiCad EDA to Build Electronic Components and Design Schematics

KiCad is a free development software for electronic design automation (EDA) that I have been looking around into to designing my final year school project (more on that later) schematics. KiCad is extensively developed and used almost exclusively by CERN! With a lot of online documentation, support and large communities, the experience of using this software has been mostly uncomplicated and a lot of fun.

Resources and Tutorials
KiCad can be downloaded for free from their website
Find component libraries here

I used the Getting To Blinky 4.0 tutorial by Contextual Electronics.
This is a popular tutorial series published by the CE guys and they’re even supportive enough to release an updated version.

Useful Documentation
From KiCad official documentation website. Also checkout this well written documentation from Gearbox Community Forum. I advise checking out the Splashboard V2 IoT thread on the same forum for best practices with KiCad. It is well discussed.

Project
In order to construct the internal schematic of the HC-12 Transceiver, I studied the datasheets of its main components: Si4463 transceiver, STM8S003F3 microcontroller and AS179-92 switch. These components were not in the component libraries linked above therefore I created a separate library to house these components and proceeded to construct the components in the Schematic Library Editor in KiCad.

The above image is a split screen of the library component being created while referencing its datasheet and GTB tutorial. At the moment I’ve set up the HC-12 Transceiver as shown:

*This is definitely not the final schematic and is my first major attempt. I will update with more in the near future.