Rover Circuit

A KiCad PCB project for a rover circuit board.

Project Structure

• rover-circuit.kicad_sch - Main schematic file
• rover-circuit.kicad_pcb - PCB layout file
• front_wheels.kicad_sch - Front wheels schematic
• rear_wheels.kicad_sch - Rear wheels schematic
• rover-circuit.step - 3D model of the circuit board
• production/ - Production files (BOM, pick & place, etc.)

Development Workflow

This project uses automated CI/CD with semantic versioning based on conventional commits.

Conventional Commits

Please follow the Conventional Commits specification for your commit messages:

• feat: - New features (triggers minor version bump)
• fix: - Bug fixes (triggers patch version bump)
• docs: - Documentation changes
• style: - Code style changes (formatting, etc.)
• refactor: - Code refactoring without changing functionality
• test: - Adding or updating tests
• chore: - Maintenance tasks, dependency updates
• BREAKING CHANGE: - Breaking changes (triggers major version bump)

Examples

feat: add power management circuit to main schematic
fix: correct trace width on high current paths
docs: update component specifications in README
chore: update footprint libraries

CI/CD Pipeline

The GitHub Actions workflow automatically:

1. On every push/PR:

   • Validates KiCad schematic and PCB files
   • Generates schematic PDFs
   • Exports 3D models (STEP files)
   • Creates Gerber files for manufacturing

2. On main branch:

   • Runs semantic-release to determine version
   • Creates GitHub releases with generated artifacts
   • Includes schematic PDFs and 3D models as release assets

Release Artifacts

Each release automatically includes:

• Schematic PDFs - Visual documentation of the circuit
• 3D Models (STEP) - For mechanical integration
• Gerber Files - For PCB manufacturing

Getting Started

1. Clone this repository
2. Open the project in KiCad 8.0+
3. Make your changes following conventional commit format
4. Push to trigger the CI/CD pipeline

Requirements

• KiCad 8.0 or later
• Git with conventional commit messages

License

MIT License - see LICENSE file for details.