Instrumenting a Board Without the Design

This is the least automated method but still works.

We recommend you take a photo of the board next to a ruler (two if you have them). This image can be imported into your EDA program as a reference image (we recommend KiCAD, support open source!). Scale the image to the ruler and whatever reference points you have (measure with calipers and enforce that spacing). This will give good results provided you took a good picture. You picture can be improved using automated machine vision tools. We can use board fiducials, the board outline, or a background object held relative to the board to fix perspective issues. This will greatly improve accuracy. Either way it is best to