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Comment by atoav | Hacker News Reader

Ordering a typical printed circuit board with components placed on it is so cheap nowadays that this is a viable option for electeonic hobbyists nowadays (e.g. just ordered 50 pieces of audio output amplifiers at 3,49 € per piece (customs and shipping included), where 1.60 € would be the parts cost of the two chips on it.

Only thing you need for this is:

1. An idea and some knowledge about electronics

2. An EDA software where you design the schematic and the PCB (Horizon EDA, KiCAD, Eagle, ...). This software will give you the Gerber files needed to manufacture the PCBs and the BOM (Bill of Materials) and a Pick-and-Place file which is basically just a CSV telling the manufacturer which part goes where and in which orientation.

3. Using the BOM you find corresponding parts the manufacturer has and put create a CSV that matches their format requirements

4. You order (e.g. I ordered at jcbpcb)

The electronics knowledge is the hardest part.

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Story time:

Back when I was in school, our introductory electronics class had us make a PCB for a PICmicro programmer on our first day. We got a handout of the schematics. We had to transfer its negative to a copper coated plate using some chemical, used UV light to fixate it, then dissolved the rest of the copper in acid. Finally we got to drill the holes for through-hole soldering points.

Next class we soldered all components. And by the end of two classes, everyone had their own functioning (or not ...) programmer, which we used the rest of the year on a variety of electronics projects. Great fun.

I used a 3D printer to draw the schematics onto copper clad with a marker:

https://www.stavros.io/posts/make-pcbs-at-home/

Check out this company if you haven't already heard of them! Nano-dimension https://www.nano-di.com/

This is 100% accurate and I recommend it. I know that most people reading this right now will say "this is so hard I don't even know where to begin", but, as with anything, once you know how it's done, it's trivial.

The parent comment is a good introduction, watch some KiCAD videos on designing circuits, the process is pretty foolproof if you design the schematic correctly, and then you basically "export Gerbers", upload them to the fab (JLCPCB), and you have PCBs in a few days.

Here's a small PCB I designed, together with Kibot project files that will error-check and export the Gerbers automatically:

https://gitlab.com/stavros/manual-fc

Install https://github.com/INTI-CMNB/kibot, run `kibot` in the directory of the designs, and you'll get files that are ready to upload to JLCPCB. Edit the designs etc to make your own thing, that should help you get started.

I find this to be amazing. I last designed a single layer PCB for an industrial control application, in the 1990s, using OrCad for the schematic, and a paint program to lay out the PCB.... needless to say, I look forward to KiCad and just having something show up at my door.

Now all I need is an idea worth spending the money on. 8 )

Out of all the hobbies I've had, electronics (mostly something to do with the ESP microcontrollers) is the most satisfying one once everything works as intended. While electronics knowledge is hard to learn on your own (in my case), there are tons of communities online that are more than willing to help.

What communities do you recommend?

I tend to float around the "Electronicity" and "Digital Hackerspace" discords. Other than those there's subreddits like r/AskElectronics, r/electronics, r/esp8266, r/esp32 etc. Sometimes people advertise their discords there and I like to pop in and see what they offer (how I found out about the previously mentioned discord servers)

One of YC startups JITX is trying to automate the electronics design part with AI.

The company is using a new L. B. Stanza programming language created as one of the co-founders Ph.D thesis [1].

[1] http://lbstanza.org/

What are the minimum order sizes like? Could I get two of something instead of 50, or would the per-piece price skyrocket?

The fab I use has a minimum order size of 3. It's a bit more expensive, but double digit monies for three decently complex boards.

Jlcpcb has a minimum quantity of 5

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