The Value Of A Worked Example

November 15, 2025 by Elliot Williams 11 Comments

I was looking over the week’s posts on Hackaday – it’s part of my job after all – and this gem caught my eye: a post about how to make your own RP2040 development board from scratch. And I’ll admit that my first thought was “why would you ever want to do that?” (Not a very Hackaday-appropriate question, honestly.) The end result will certainly cost more than just buying a Pi Pico off the shelf!

Then it hit me: this isn’t a project per se, but rather [Kai] was using it as an test run to learn the PCB-production toolchain. And for that, replicating a Pico board is perfect, because the schematics are easily available. While I definitely think that a project like this is a bit complicated for a first PCB project – I’d recommend making something fun like an SAO – the advantage of making something slightly more involved is that you run into all of the accompanying ~~problems~~ learning experiences. What a marvelous post-complete-beginner finger exercise!

And then it hit me again. [Kai]’s documentation of everything learned during the project was absolutely brilliant. It’s part KiCAD tutorial, part journal about all the hurdles of getting a PCB made, and just chock-full of helpful tips along the way. The quality of the write-up turns it from being just a personal project into something that can help other people who are in exactly the same boat, and I’m guessing that’s a number of you out there.

In the end, this was a perfect Hackaday project. Yes, it was “too simple” for those who have made their 30th PCB design. (Although I’d bet you could still pick up a KiCAD tip or two.) And yes, it doesn’t make economic sense to replicate mass-market devices in one-off. And of course, it doesn’t need that fun art on the board either. But wrap all these up together, and you get a superbly documented guide to a useful project that would walk you through 95% of what you’ll need to make more elaborate projects later on. Superb!

Surely you do “finger exercises” too. Why not write them up, and share the learning? And send them our way – we know just the audience who will want to read it.

RP2040 From Scratch: Roll Your Own Dev Board Magic

November 10, 2025 by Matt Varian 15 Comments

Have you ever looked at a small development board like an Arduino or an ESP8266 board and thought you’d like one with just a few different features? Well, [Kai] has put out a fantastic guide on how to make an RP2040 dev board that’s all your own.

Development boards are super useful for prototyping a project, and some are quite simple, but there’s often some hidden complexity that needs to be considered before making your own. The RP2040 is a great chip to start your dev-board development journey, thanks to its excellent documentation and affordable components. [Kai] started this project using KiCad, which has all the features needed to go from schematics to final PCB Gerber files. In the write-up, [Kai] goes over how to implement USB-C in your design and how to add flash memory to your board, providing a place for your program to live. Once the crystal oscillator circuit is defined, decoupling capacitors added, and the GPIO pins you want to use are defined, it’s time to move to the PCB layout.

In the PCB design, it starts with an outside-in approach, first defining the board size, then adding the pins that sit along the edges of that board, followed by the USB connector, and then moving on to the internal components. Some components, such as the crystal oscillator, need to be placed near the RP2040 chip, and the same goes for some of the decoupling capacitors. There is a list of good practices around routing traces that [Kai] included for best results, which are useful to keep in mind once you have this many connections in a tight space. Not all traces are the same; for instance, the USB-C signal lines are a differential pair where it’s important that D+ and D- are close to the same length.

Finally, there is a walk-through on the steps needed to have your boards not only made at a board house but also assembled there if you choose to do so. Thanks [Kai] for taking the time to lay out the entire process for others to learn from; we look forward to seeing future dev-board designs. Be sure to check out some of our other awesome RP2040 projects.

Is This The Last PCB You’ll Ever Buy?

November 2, 2025 by Tyler August 44 Comments

Breadboards are great, but as the world moves more and more to having SMD as a standard, prototyping straight PCBs is becoming more common. If you’re mailing off to China for your PCBs, it’s shockingly quick for what it is, but a one-week turnaround is not “rapid prototyping”. [Stephen Hawes] has been on a quest on his YouTube channel for the ideal rapid-prototyping PCB solution, and he thinks he’s finally got it.

Now, if you’re only doing single-layer PCBs, this is a solved problem. You can mechanically mill, or laser cut, or chemically etch your way to PCB perfection, far faster than the Chinese fabs can get you a part. If you want a double-sided board, however, vias are both a pain in the keister to do yourself, and a rate-limiting step.

[Stephen Hawes] hit on the idea of buying a bulk set of PCBs from the usual vendors. The boards will be simple copper pours with vias in a grid with just a bit of etching. PCB Vendors are good at that, after all, and it’s not going to cost much more than raw copper. [Stephen] then uses the template of this “viagrid” board to lay out the circuit he’s prototyping, and it’s off to the races. Continue reading “Is This The Last PCB You’ll Ever Buy?” →

Connector-Free Zone: PCB Edge As USB-C Interfaces

October 27, 2025 by Matt Varian 37 Comments

Sometimes when you’re making a PCB that you plan on programming over USB, but you only plan on plugging in a couple of times, it would be nice to make that connection without another BOM item. Over on GitHub [AnasMalas] has released a PCB edge USB-C connection symbol/footprint to do just that!

This isn’t the first PCB edge USB-C connector we’ve seen, but this one has some nice features. It’s available in both KiCad and EasyEDA formats, allowing you to easily add it into your preferred ECAD software. As well as supporting multiple software packages, there are two versions included: a 10-pin and 14-pin version. The 10-pin version has, on each side, 2 USB voltage pins, 2 ground pins, and a CC1 or CC2 pin on its respective side; this version is ideal if you’re looking to just supply power via the connector. The 14-pin version has all the pins of the 10-pin version with the addition of four data-positive and data-negative pins needed to relay information to the board, ideal if you’re planning on programming a microcontroller with this connection.

One important note is that, while most PCBs default to 1.6 mm thickness, if you use this connector you’ll need to drop that down to ~0.8 mm to properly interface with a common USB cable. [AnasMalas] also suggests using ENIG board finish to preserve the connectors on your USB cable.

For such a small and common connector, USB-C holds a ton of potential. Be sure to check out our series all about USB-C for more details.

Thanks to [Ben] for the tip.

Screenshot of the email received: Hi there, Upon a thorough review by our Risk Control Team, we are sorry to inform you that, your account access will be permanently disabled on December 13th, 2025 due to compliance policy requirements. Before this date, you may: 1) Complete any existing orders. 2) Pickup components from your parts inventory. 3) Withdraw your remaining account balance (JLC Balance) 4) Back up your historical Gerber Files or any other information. Please note that after December 13th, 2025, your account will be permanently locked and cannot be reopened. Best Regards, The JLCPCB Risk Control Team

JLCPCB Locking Accounts, Mentions “Risky IP Addresses, Activities”

October 19, 2025 by Arya Voronova 73 Comments

In the past week, a few forum and Reddit threads have popped up, with people stating that JLCPCB has emailed them with a notice, saying their accounts are set up for terminations after an assessment by JLCPCB’s “Risk Control Team”. Reasons given are vague, the terminations are non-appealable, and if you’re planning a JLCPCB order sometime soon, it can certainly come as a surprise. From the looks of it, the accounts restricted do not appear to be tied to any specific country – and not even from the same “kind” of countries.

As quite a few people have observed, the JLCPCB reasoning resembles a compliance action way more than it resembles any sort of internal policy. A few days ago, JLCPCB has released a statement on their blog, claiming that a “history of risky IP addresses and risky activities” would be grounds for a termination, and mentioning “compliance” in ways that would hint at external legal pressures.

By now, quickly checking around Reddit and some other places, we’ve counted at least ten people affected so far – most of them have received emails about account closures, but at least one person has reported a denial when attempting to place an order, instead of getting an email ahead of time. The latter hints that there’s a number of people not yet notified about their account getting terminated, and the amount of people actually affected might very well be a fair bit larger than we can see.

Continue reading “JLCPCB Locking Accounts, Mentions “Risky IP Addresses, Activities”” →

Two sides of a business-card shaped device are shown. On the left, it’s clear that the device is about half a centimeter thick, with a large scroll wheel visible in the center. The device cover is 3D-printed in black plastic, and has cutouts to mark where three buttons ar. On the right, the underside of the device is visible. It is a black PCB, with white text giving contact information.

Building A Macro Pad Into A Business Card

August 31, 2025 by Aaron Beckendorf 10 Comments

A business card is a convenient way to share your contact information, but it’s unfortunately prone to being thrown away or forgotten. PCB business cards try to get around this problem, but while impressive, most won’t keep the recipient engaged for a very long time. [Cole Olsen]’s macro pad business card, on the other hand, might actually get regular use.

The card has three buttons and a rotary encoder as controls, with an RGB LED to indicate the card’s current mode. It can perform three sets of functions: general productivity, serving as a presentation remote, and controlling music. The scroll wheel is the main control, and can switch through windows, desktops, and tabs, page through slides, and control music volume.

The card itself is made out of a PCB, the exposed side of which contains [Cole]’s contact information, and the other side of which is covered by a 3D-printed case. As thick as it is, this might be stretching the definition of “card” a bit, but as a mechanical engineer, [Cole] did want to demonstrate some mechanical design. A nice!nano wireless keyboard development board running ZMK firmware reads the sensors and sends commands. Conveniently for a presentation remote, the card is powered by a rechargeable battery and can work wirelessly (as a side benefit, if a recipient were minded to get rid of this card, the lithium-polymer battery would probably substantially delay disposal).

[Cole] writes that he was inspired by many of the other impressive business cards we’ve covered. Some of the macro pads we’ve seen have been marvels of miniaturization in their own right.

Who Is Your Audience?

August 23, 2025 by Elliot Williams 32 Comments

Here at Hackaday HQ, we all have opinions about the way we like to do things. And no surprise, this extends to the way we like to lay out circuits in schematics. So when we were discussing our own takes on this piece on suggested schematic standards, it was maybe more surprising how much we did agree on than how much we had different preferred styles. But of course, it was the points where we disagreed that provoked the most interesting discussion, and that’s when I had a revelation.

Besides torturing electronics, we all also write for you all, and one thing we always have in mind is who we’re writing for. The Hackaday audience, not to blow you up, is pretty knowledgeable and basically “full-stack” in terms of the hardware/software spectrum. This isn’t to say that everyone is a specialist in everything, though, and we also have certain archetypes in mind: the software type who is just starting out with hardware, the hardware type who isn’t as savvy about software, etc. So, back to schematic layout: Who is your audience? It matters.

For instance, do you organize the pinout for an IC by pin number or by pin function, grouping the power pins and the ADC pins and so on? If your audience is trying to figure out the circuit logic, you should probably go functional. But if you are trying to debug a circuit, you’re often looking at the circuit diagram to figure out what a given pin does, and the pin-number layout is more appropriate.

Do you lay out the logical flow of the circuit in the schematic, or do you try to mimic the PCB layout? Again, it could depend on how your audience will be using it. If they have access to your CAD tool, and can hop back and forth seamlessly from schematic to PCB, the logical flow layout is the win. However, if they are an audience of beginners, or stuck with a PDF of the schematic, or trying to debug a non-working board, perhaps the physical layout is the right approach.

Al Williams, who has experience with projects of a much larger scale than most of us self-taught hackers, doesn’t even think that a schematic makes sense. He thinks that it’s much easier to read and write the design in a hardware description language like VHDL. Of course, that’s certainly true for IC designs, and probably also for boards of a certain complexity. But this is only true when your audience is also familiar with the HDL in question. Otherwise, you’re writing in Finnish for an audience of Spaniards.

Before this conversation, I was thinking of schematic layout as Tom Nardi described it on the podcast – a step along the way to get to the fun parts of PCB layout and then to getting the boards in hand. But at least in our open-source hardware world, it’s also a piece of the documentation, and a document that has an audience of peers who it pays to keep in mind just as much as when I’m sitting down and writing this very newsletter. In some ways, it’s the same thing.

(And yeah, I know the featured image doesn’t exactly fit the topic, but I love it anyway.)