Ground plane for PCB

[arunisaac]

Very nice project! :-) I'm planning to build a stenokey for myself. I looked at the PCB and there seems to be no ground plane on the PCB. Isn't this bad for noise performance? Besides, without a ground plane, a lot of copper gets wasted during etching.

[mike-ady]

Thanks Arunisaac,

The board is low speed and it's deliberately 2 layer to minimize cost so no ground plane. The cost differential for a 4 layer board at my board house of choice may not be as large as it was 3 or 4 years ago, but it still increases the cost of a board of the size used in the Stenokey project by a factor of 2 or 3. (The differential is as much as 10 to 1 on smaller boards.)

Certainly, a copper pour on each layer is in order. Kicad was not always as bug free as it is today and copper pours have caused me much grief. Even with all of the work that has gone into Kicad these last few years, it still requires vigilance to ensure that a copper pour doesn't cause issues with a board design.

[arunisaac]

Yes, I only meant a copper pour. A separate ground plane in addition to the 2 existing layers would indeed be too expensive.

Cheers!