SparkFun Electronics Eagle Libraries
A comprehensive collection of PCB footprints and schematic symbols for Eagle CAD, maintained by SparkFun Electronics.
What is SparkFun Electronics Eagle Libraries?
SparkFun Eagle Libraries is a collection of PCB footprints and schematic symbols for Autodesk Eagle CAD software. It provides pre-made, verified components for thousands of electronic parts, saving hardware designers time and reducing errors when creating circuit boards. The libraries are maintained by SparkFun Electronics and organized into logical categories for easy navigation.
Hardware engineers, electronics hobbyists, and PCB designers who use Autodesk Eagle CAD software for creating circuit boards. It's particularly valuable for those working with common electronic components and SparkFun products.
These libraries offer professionally verified footprints that reduce the risk of PCB manufacturing errors, saving designers countless hours of component creation. Unlike generic libraries, these have been tested in real-world applications by SparkFun's engineering team.
Overview
SparkFun's Public Eagle PCB Footprints
Use Cases
Best For
- Designing PCBs with common electronic components
- Creating boards compatible with SparkFun products
- Rapid prototyping with pre-verified footprints
- Educational projects teaching PCB design
- Hobbyist electronics projects using Eagle CAD
- Professional hardware development needing reliable libraries
Not Ideal For
- Designers using CAD software other than Autodesk Eagle, such as KiCad or Altium Designer
- Projects requiring footprints for proprietary or niche components not covered by SparkFun's product catalog
- Teams that cannot tolerate any risk of footprint errors and need guaranteed 100% accuracy without manual verification
- Hardware developers needing immediate library updates for the latest electronic components released to market
Pros & Cons
Pros
With over 30 organized categories from microcontrollers to sensors, it eliminates the need to create footprints from scratch, saving significant design time.
Each footprint is created and checked by SparkFun's engineering team, reducing common PCB errors like misaligned pads or incorrect sizes.
The user-submitted library allows contributions from the open-source hardware community, keeping the library updated with new and diverse parts.
Released under Creative Commons ShareAlike 4.0, it permits commercial use with simple attribution, which is advantageous for product development.
Cons
The README explicitly warns that 'there are some messed up footprints,' requiring users to manually verify with 1:1 printouts, which adds risk and effort.
It only works with Autodesk Eagle v6.0+, locking users into this specific software and offering no support for other popular CAD tools like KiCad.
Not all footprints are proven and tested; some may have unmarked issues, forcing designers to rely on community reports or personal checks.
Frequently Asked Questions
Related Projects
Adafruit Eagle LibrarySlowly building up a collection of parts we use here ... This file includes some library parts from microbuilder.eu Most of 'em are either Eagle parts that I've changed a little to make them easier to solder, some are 'handmade' and a few are from microbuilder.eu Its released into the Public Domain - that means you can do whatever you want. We'd like it if you kept the author email/url in the part description, just so we can be alerted if there are errors. Enjoy!
List of ULPs everyone should knowFound a gem we're missing?
Open-Awesome is built by the community, for the community. Submit a project, suggest an awesome list, or help improve the catalog on GitHub.