Hello everyone! First off, I need to mention that my background is in Computer Science (this project is actually for my thesis) and not in Electrical or Computer Engineering. As such, everything I’ve learned has been largely on my own, within the past few months.
That being said, I would feel more confident if an experienced set of eyes could take a look at my schematic and let me know if anything pops out as wrong/bad practice. Furthermore, with regards to the decoupling capacitor on the DS3231M RTC module (C1 on the schematic) I have a question: Would there be any problem if I use an electrolytic capacitor instead of a ceramic one? I read some stuff about the topic and people recommend using ceramic capacitors most of the time (I think) but others say that there shouldn’t be a problem to use an electrolytic capacitor. I’m asking because I’ve already placed an order for parts, and one of them is this assorted set of electrolytic capacitors.
Please if you notice any mistakes or things that are not done the best way let me know, and try to explain why as simply as you can. As I said, I don’t have a background in EE, even though it highly interests me and I want to learn.
Here is the schematic:
Many thanks in advance!
For really high speeds, even the size of ceramic is important, you’ll want to overlap several sizes of ceramic caps to fully overlap any fluctuating voltages on the power rails to the IC.
This is a great explanation I used when I was still a young engineer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcJ6UdDx1vg
Thanks it actually was quite helpful to understand why I need to use such a capacitor for my chips! (Until towards the end he started getting really deep into it and my eyes glazed over)
Am I correct in assuming that my project and the chips I use do not really require me to put 3 or 4 different value capacitors in parallel instead of just one? Also, he mentions that its a good idea to use this technique on all chips, so would there be a downside to me placing a (or more) capacitor on the Vcc pin of all 3 of my chips (RTC, LCD display, Bluetooth) even though their datasheets might not specifically mention requiring them? Basically, if I have the capacitors, is there a reason to not put a decoupling capacitor on the Vcc pin of any chip in your circuit?