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Is the custom circuit board something that mortals can get made? That seems to be the sticky point to me.





Yup. About fifteen years ago there was an explosion in small-run PCB services that cater to hobbyists (and cottage-scale professionals). If you don't need them overnight you can get good quality PCBs made at a very reasonable price.

99% of hobbyist PCBs are can be ordered from JLCPCB nowadays.

As long the PCBs have no components on them it's very cheap.


Even if they have components on them, that's only $1-$2 extra per board (depending on the components), JLCPCB will assemble all the common components (resistors, capacitors, some more exotic ones) for very cheap, and you can solder the rest yourself. Their PCB assembly saves so much time, I don't want to waste half an hour soldering 20 0805 resistors to save $0.30 any more.

JLCPCB assembly services are so cheap as long as you don't use components marked as extended!

I don't solder passive components anymore and now mostly use 0402 (that i am not able to solder reliably) instead of the bigger 0805. If you value your time and don't derive pleasure from soldering passive components, try the assembly services!


just upload it to jlcpcb and get it delivered with components soldered.



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