Very cool. 5-fold symmetry on the PCB to use up the board allowance is particularly neat.
A trick that poor hobbyists learn early on is to make pads a little larger than necessary for SMT parts so you've got somewhere to wick solder onto. Neopixels (5050 LEDs) are reasonable to hand-solder since the pads extend up the sides of the package, but you can also do QFNs with a bit of practice by placing a big via to get to the central pad from underneath.
Kicad has options for hand solder footprints on some components.
Always good to think about if you can get an iron on there during design...not only pad size but component orientation/location.
At times the difference between "easy to rework" and "impossible to rework without removing other components" can be just a 90deg rotation.
throwaway219450 · · focus · HN ↗
A trick that poor hobbyists learn early on is to make pads a little larger than necessary for SMT parts so you've got somewhere to wick solder onto. Neopixels (5050 LEDs) are reasonable to hand-solder since the pads extend up the sides of the package, but you can also do QFNs with a bit of practice by placing a big via to get to the central pad from underneath.
Ccecil · · focus · HN ↗
Always good to think about if you can get an iron on there during design...not only pad size but component orientation/location.
At times the difference between "easy to rework" and "impossible to rework without removing other components" can be just a 90deg rotation.