Dual Footswitch + Power PCB (feedback pls)

[Mel]

Hi, I'm about to send my first PCB to the fab and I would love any feedback, tips or ideas from the pros here 

I wanted to outsource switching, leds, power filtering and the voltage divider to a separate pcb to have more space and flexibility with the effect board itself.

I tried to keep power separate from signal and have the shortes possible lines everywhere.

Any other issues, ideas or suggestions?

Thanks a lot!

[ElectricDruid]

The only thing that jumps out at me is how close together the two footswitches are. You either have to be very careful, or have small feet!!

EDIT: Welcome!! Sorry, didn't notice you were new here!

[fryingpan]

Is it four layers? Huge overkill.

[R.G.]

+1 to the previous two comments.

Two layers would be plenty. It's perfectly fine to route signal traces across power traces, especially at right angles. The trace lengths could be shorter, most likely, but it's a good first effort.

And yes - the footswitches are going to be very difficult to press one at a time. Try this: with your shoes on, measure the width of your shoe soles at the base of your big toe. For more than two footswitches, this is the smallest distance the footswitches can be separated and still reliably (say, after more than one beer) be pressed by your foot. For only  two footswitches, it is possible to press the right switch with the right edge of your shoe sole and the left switch with the left edge of your left shoe sole, but the closer the two switches get, the more precision in placing your shoe sole that you will need to switch only one switch - not to mention that you really ought to remember which leg/foot is needed on which switch.

Tiny controls or controls spaced too closely together are easy to lay out but can be very hard for a working musician to actually use. It's an issue that is independent of the electronics.

[Mel]

Thanks a bunch for the thoughts!

@R.G. thanks, maybe I'm too nervous about the separation of the traces. I managed to shorten things a bit more (below).

Regarding layers: no it's just regular 2 layers. I should have labelled the images properly. The fourth image had the nets colored by purpose (signal vs power). The third image shows the layers (red/blue).

Yeah, the switches are quite close, but about as far as a 125B allows. I have a few dual switch pedals in 125Bs and it's workable for me at least as long as I don't have several pedals like this right next to each other.

I'm doing it like R.G. suggests with the edge of the shoe, rather than the middle. I totally understand though that there's situations (and playing styles) where it's not really ideal.

I fiddled with things a bit more and will probably send this off to the fab:



Thanks again for the inputs.

[ElectricDruid]

Maybe rotate the 125B 90 degrees and use it in "landscape" format instead of portrait? That way, the switches can be nearly as far apart as on a 1590B.

HTH