I finally got around to drawing up a schematic for a little relay controller I want to build, and this would be my first real PCB ever. It runs six relays off a 12v supply, with a small microcontroller doing the switching. I dropped the 12 volts down to 5 with a buck converter section I copied from a datasheet example circuit, and now I'm second guessing wether I sized the capacitors right.
The part keeping me up at night is the relay coils. I put diodes across each one for the back EMF, but I'm honestly not sure I got the orientation correct on all six. If one is backwards, does that just fry the diode when the coil kicks, or does it take out the transistor driving it too? Also curious about grounding. I've got the power supply ground and the microcontroller ground tied togather at one point near the connector, which seemed right, but I read somewhere that star grounding matters more once you're switching inductive loads. Is that something I need to worry about at this scale, or am I overthinking a board that only pulls an amp or two? Happy to post the net list if that helps anyone spot dumb mistakes before I hit order.