3/25/2026 7:24 PM - Setup base for project, I will use the L80RE GPS Module

(Working on my Flight controller project (for my drone) I realized I would want some GPS too, but that can't be mounted anywhere near the main electronics so instead I will mount the FC on the underside of the drone and mount the GPS PCB on the top, facing upwards, and since it's a completely separate PCB I will make it into a new project, simple but separate, so it's easier)

First off I found the L80RE-M37 and L96 GPS modules, the thing with the L96 module is it happens to have a much smaller antenna area, this would make reception much much weaker, whereas the L80 has a much bigger antenna so it makes my life easier. Adding more ground plane (which is the actual antenna for GPS apparently) would help even more. This is going to be a board that simply has a very large surface area with just the SMD GPS Module, a coin battery holder and maybe decoupling caps if needed. And an FPC connector so I can connect it to my main FC.

3/25/2026 7:48 PM - Made the schematic for the GPS module

Simply followed the design guide https://www.dragino.com/downloads/downloads/datasheet/other_vendors/L80-R/Quectel_L80-R_Hardware_Design_V1.2.pdf, added a cell battery so that the time is kept even when the drone is turned off and disconnected from battery so that it doesn't have to be redone on every power up. And some necessary decoupling capacitors. Plus an FPC connector, the same connector will go on the flight controller, connected together by an FPC cable (I need to free some GPIO on the FC for UART, I didn't realize there'd be no I2C)

3/25/2026 9 PM - Made the PCB, positioned and routed.

Positioned all the components, L80 in the center, the FPC on the right, and the cell battery at the bottom and also added the decoupling caps and stuff in the correct places. I also made sure to follow the design guide for the L80, and add the keep out area on the bottom of the board (I just made a hole in it) and the 30x30mm keep out zone. Added the few traces for the signal UART, power and the battery. The rest is just a massive ground plane with big vias to ensure a consistent plane and therefore good antenna and signal reception. Now I need to add a nice silkscreen mask, check DRC, put into fusion, take some renders then done. I don't need a case as this will just mount on top of my drone.

3/26/2026 7 PM - Added some vias and adjusted board.

I had to change a few things after getting some help about the design of this, such as adding waaaaay more vias and running traces through vias on the bottom plane onto the underside of the module.

3/26/2026 8:17 PM - Added PCB artwork

Added some really cool designs that I found using Inkscape to vectorize them from bitmaps to SVG files that I can then add as silkscreen covers. I also made sure to use masks to cover any components on the board so that the silkscreen didn't collide with them.

3/26/2026 8:47 PM - Checked DRC, tried putting into Fusion to make renders.

I checked the DRC for the PCB and fixed most of the problems (traces too close, annular width etc) however there are a bunch of warnings but it's fine because these are just from the silkscreen clipping the board's edge but they'll get removed automatically so it's perfectly fine to have it like this.

I also tried exporting a STEP file of the board, however I only managed to export board only and components, if I tried exporting other stuff such as vias/traces/planes etc I get this weird error about the tolerance part (0.1/0.01/0.001 etc) of sizes being wrong, even though I've changed nothing in terms of that so I just left it as is and got a render of just the board with components and it should be fine, I did get some renders from KiCad's internal 3D viewer though.

3/28/2026 - Made some basic firmware.

This is just some basic firmware to satisfy the requirement, the actual firmware running this will be on the flight controller. This mostly just sets up the UART connection and serial PC connection and gets GPS location data.