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I am in the phase of debugging a PCB with several chips on it. I currently realize that during PCB design some strategies for easy debugging later on should be implemented.

Personnaly, I just realized the importance of placing test point (on power rails and on signals to monitor such as communication interface (SPI, I2C, UART) or reset pin, R0 resistor/jumpers to isolate circuit group to make some unit testing, and ading some small leds onpower rails to quickly identify if power is disributed on power rail or not.

I am quite sure there are other strategies to implement.

Can you share what other usefull design strategies do you implement when you are designing your PCB ?

chris
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    related: http://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/224733/what-are-good-quality-of-life-additions-to-a-prototype-pcb/224739 – Wesley Lee Sep 06 '16 at 08:42

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For microcontrollers, a user switch, a user LED and a TTL-level serial port brought out to a header can be useful, especially if there are no other simple communication methods (maybe there's just an Ethernet port, which might not work right off).

If you put no other test points in, at least put a ground test point of adequate size for an oscilloscope probe.

Almost all of the things you will do to ensure adequate testing in production will help with debugging. Generally speaking, designing the testing (including fixtures and procedures as well as features on the board) is probably a similar amount of work to designing the board itself.

Spehro Pefhany
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