This is part 25 of an ongoing live design stream where Petr works through a real, non-trivial PCB layout in KiCad for a board based on the STMicroelectronics STM32MP215F — a Cortex-A35 + Cortex-M33 heterogeneous applications processor. That chip alone is a big step up from the usual Arduino-tier hobby content: it runs Linux, has DDR interfaces, high-speed peripherals, and a BGA package, which means the layout work involves the sort of constraints (impedance control, fanout, layer stackup planning, decoupling strategy) that most beginner PCB tutorials skip entirely.

In this episode Petr focuses on the PCB layout stage specifically — placing and routing discrete blocks in small-area sections of the board. Watching an experienced designer make placement decisions in real time is genuinely instructive: you see how they reason about tradeoffs, where they zoom in and measure, when they pause to double-check the schematic, and how they handle the fiddly reality of routing near a dense BGA. It's the opposite of a polished, edited tutorial, and that's the point — you get the process, not just the finished result.

The fact that it's part 25 also means the surrounding series is a rare long-form record of a complete, complex KiCad project from concept to fabrication, which is enormously valuable if you're trying to level up from breakout-board hobby layouts to something production-grade.