I'm laying out a motor controller board that's got a uC onboard. I've got GND1 and GND2, GND2 is a high current ground for the FET's driving the motors, GND1 is a low current ground plane for the logic. I've got all the sensors, logic ground, etc coming in on the left side of my board. And all the noisy high current stuff is on the right, with the high current GND2 on the right (this is a unidirectional motor driver, so it's only got high current ground) and all the various outputs are coming out on the right as well.
My question is, I know the two ground planes need to be connected, otherwise the uC wouldn't be able to control the outputs (at least not with tons of optocouplers, which I don't want to do, they'd be way overkill for this). All of the grounds will eventually be going to the same chassis, so they'll be joined outside the unit. How should I join the two ground planes on the board? I was thinking a decoupling cap might work, but intuitively, I feel that'd be a mistake. Maybe a really low value resistor, .001 ohms or something? Or simply a jumper, be it a .1" two pin header that I solder a jumper across, or maybe a single trace connecting the two.
Having no formal training in this, I may not even have my terms right.
And I'm sorry, I can't post the board up to share, my reasons are complicated.
