Project Notes

PCB Fabrication

To go beyond breadboards, Manhattan or other home-brew techniques for circuit fabrication, there are basically 3 options:

DIY PCB Etching
Send to a fab - see options below
Get a PCB milling machine e.g. from ucamco

Small-batch PCB Fabrication Services

Projects I’ve sent to a fab

nRF24Breakout - sent to OSH Park
ShiftDriveModule - sent to OSH Park

More Guides and References

Fritzing Guide to PCB Production

PCB Design Tools

EDA - wikipedia
KiCad - the tool I’m using for PCB design
KiCad like a Pro - a great course for learning KiCad

About

Project Source on GitHub Project Gallery Return to the LEAP Catalog

This page is a web-friendly rendering of my project notes shared in the LEAP GitHub repository.

LEAP is just my personal collection of projects, usually involving an Arduino or other microprocessor in one way or another. Some are full-blown projects, while many are trivial breadboard experiments, intended to learn and explore something interesting (IMHO!).

The projects are usually inspired by things found wild on the net, or ideas from the sources such as:

Boldport Club
Elektor magazine
Nuts&Volts magazine
Silicon Chip magazine
Electrical Engineering StackExchange
Arduino StackExchange
Arduino Playground
books from my electronics bookshelf
the many great electronics YouTube channels e.g.

and my favourite podcasts e.g.

Feel free to borrow liberally, and if you spot any issues do let me know. See the individual projects for credits where due. There are even now a few projects contributed by others - send your own over in a pull request if you would also like to add to this collection.