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Yes, you can learn PCB design “in a month”, design your board and get a batch of prototypes made up by JLCPCB. All of that takes 2-3 months absolute minimum. Th

by tomhow 11d ago

Yes, you can learn PCB design “in a month”, design your board and get a batch of prototypes made up by JLCPCB. All of that takes 2-3 months absolute minimum. Then you have to test the boards. You need a lot of costly equipment and expertise to test the board and fix any problems with it. That can take days to weeks of work. Then ordering your next batch of prototypes carries a 2-4 week turnaround time including shipping. Repeat this for any design error or just any improvement you want to make once you’ve tried working with it for a bit. Then you have to write the firmware. That’s weeks or months of work. (And much of the embedded firmware code I’ve seen come out of small business engineering departments or consulting shops is terrible, because they don’t have the time/budget or organizational structure that delivers clean, readable, well-structured, well abstracted C code.) All this is before you get an MVP into the hands of your customers. Then you start getting customer feedback and have to start making more improvements. “Never been easier” it may well be to get a hobby project prototypes. But for a product with any amount of serious functionality, it’s at least months and likely 1-2 years to get anything into volume production. But the potential for saving huge amounts of time particularly on design/layout, pre-manufacturing error detection, and production of well-structured and debugged firmware code are huge.

rjh29 11d ago
You lost me when you referred to a multimeter as "costly equipment"
- tomhow 11d ago
  I don’t know why you need to be snarky. I’ve been living this for over a decade with engineers with decades of experience who have done some of the most advanced electronics work imaginable (satellites, military drones). To test and rework a surface-mount PCB, you may need: - logic analyzer or oscilloscope; - microscope; - high precision soldering equipment/ability; - solder paste and oven; - cutting equipment to cut through 4-6 PCB layers and connect tracks with hair-width wire; - Years/decades of education and experience to understand what to look for and what to do when you find a problem.
  - rjh29 11d ago
    If you made the PCB then you should be well placed to fix issues with it. You don't need years of experience , you have the schematic. A microscope (if you need it) is 40 USD. A logic analyser is 10 USD. Solder paste and hot air is only for specific parts and that is 30 usd. I am assuming 2 layer - 6 layer PCBs are very specialised (e.g. drones) The reason I'm being snarky is because it feels like you don't know what you're talking about. I know you're a mod so ban me or we but that's the impression I got.
    - tomhow 11d ago
      It’s a low move to suggest that I would ban you over a substantive disagreement in a discussion. I wouldn’t last a day in this job if I misused power like that. > If you made the PCB then you should be well placed to fix issues with it. You don't need years of experience , you have the schematic. A microscope (if you need it) is 40 USD. A logic analyser is 10 USD. Solder paste and hot air is only for specific parts and that is 30 usd. This is obviously at the extreme low end of the amount of experience and cost/quality of equipment you need to do serious work. Decent oscilloscopes or logic analyzers alone are several hundred dollars, and I didn’t even mention a programmer module, which is $500+ for a licensed J-Link. And you need to be a proficient C programmer. > I am assuming 2 layer - 6 layer PCBs are very specialised (e.g. drones) I am talking about 4-6 layer multi-MCU boards for reading from multiple different types of environmental sensors, connecting to multiple different network types (Bluetooth, cellular, satellite) and supporting multiple different power options (lithium battery, 12V DC, USB, solar). Painstakingly minimized power consumption, redundant data storage. Analogue front end for impedance readings of legacy soil moisture sensors. It’s a lot to get right together and to all work reliably in outdoor/remote contexts. But plenty of products that could be useful to reasonably large numbers of people (e.g. advanced home automation/robotics) would need to be comparably sophisticated. Elsewhere in the thread you’ve written: > PCB design is not that hard. People trying to offload this to AI are also unwilling or unable to put in the work to actually diagnose issues and finish the project. This is a dismissive value judgement against others whose circumstances you don’t know about. It’s clearly hard, relative to other kinds of technology work (web/desktop software etc), and not worth it if you can’t get to volume production and sales. So, sure, you can learn simple PCB design and get a simple 2-layer board in your hands in a month. Degree-qualified electronics engineers and companies obviously exist to provide the rest of the capabilities needed to get a serious product built and all the way to market and volume sales. It’s clearly not always as effortless as you’re making it out to be in order to justify the sneer.
- SequoiaHope 10d ago
  At the robotics lab I work with it’s not uncommon for a piece of electronics to require a multi thousand dollar voltmeter, because they need to measure precisely extremely small voltages. We have a bunch of these in our lab for example: https://www.tek.com/en/products/keithley/digital-multimeter/dmm6500-6-5-digit-multimeter https://www.tek.com/en/products/keithley/digital-multimeter/... Your series of comments in this thread frankly demonstrate a lack of understanding of what electrical engineering is. Yes if you want to make glowing LEDs then a multimeter and other cheap equipment are all you need, and you might be able to learn that in a month. But electrical engineering is so much deeper than that. Trouble comes when you have things like high power circuits right next to sensitive high speed signals. Eg a compact drone motherboard could be driving potentially hundreds of watts of switching currents right next to high speed camera sensor data streams. There’s countless examples of what can make electrical engineering hard. If you don’t understand, don’t argue with people online - listen to people with experience and seek to understand why without challenging what surprises you. It’s all very interesting if you want to learn it.

by tomhow 11d ago

rjh29 11d ago

You lost me when you referred to a multimeter as "costly equipment"

tomhow 11d ago
I don’t know why you need to be snarky. I’ve been living this for over a decade with engineers with decades of experience who have done some of the most advanced electronics work imaginable (satellites, military drones). To test and rework a surface-mount PCB, you may need: - logic analyzer or oscilloscope; - microscope; - high precision soldering equipment/ability; - solder paste and oven; - cutting equipment to cut through 4-6 PCB layers and connect tracks with hair-width wire; - Years/decades of education and experience to understand what to look for and what to do when you find a problem.
- rjh29 11d ago
  If you made the PCB then you should be well placed to fix issues with it. You don't need years of experience , you have the schematic. A microscope (if you need it) is 40 USD. A logic analyser is 10 USD. Solder paste and hot air is only for specific parts and that is 30 usd. I am assuming 2 layer - 6 layer PCBs are very specialised (e.g. drones) The reason I'm being snarky is because it feels like you don't know what you're talking about. I know you're a mod so ban me or we but that's the impression I got.
  - tomhow 11d ago
    It’s a low move to suggest that I would ban you over a substantive disagreement in a discussion. I wouldn’t last a day in this job if I misused power like that. > If you made the PCB then you should be well placed to fix issues with it. You don't need years of experience , you have the schematic. A microscope (if you need it) is 40 USD. A logic analyser is 10 USD. Solder paste and hot air is only for specific parts and that is 30 usd. This is obviously at the extreme low end of the amount of experience and cost/quality of equipment you need to do serious work. Decent oscilloscopes or logic analyzers alone are several hundred dollars, and I didn’t even mention a programmer module, which is $500+ for a licensed J-Link. And you need to be a proficient C programmer. > I am assuming 2 layer - 6 layer PCBs are very specialised (e.g. drones) I am talking about 4-6 layer multi-MCU boards for reading from multiple different types of environmental sensors, connecting to multiple different network types (Bluetooth, cellular, satellite) and supporting multiple different power options (lithium battery, 12V DC, USB, solar). Painstakingly minimized power consumption, redundant data storage. Analogue front end for impedance readings of legacy soil moisture sensors. It’s a lot to get right together and to all work reliably in outdoor/remote contexts. But plenty of products that could be useful to reasonably large numbers of people (e.g. advanced home automation/robotics) would need to be comparably sophisticated. Elsewhere in the thread you’ve written: > PCB design is not that hard. People trying to offload this to AI are also unwilling or unable to put in the work to actually diagnose issues and finish the project. This is a dismissive value judgement against others whose circumstances you don’t know about. It’s clearly hard, relative to other kinds of technology work (web/desktop software etc), and not worth it if you can’t get to volume production and sales. So, sure, you can learn simple PCB design and get a simple 2-layer board in your hands in a month. Degree-qualified electronics engineers and companies obviously exist to provide the rest of the capabilities needed to get a serious product built and all the way to market and volume sales. It’s clearly not always as effortless as you’re making it out to be in order to justify the sneer.
SequoiaHope 10d ago
At the robotics lab I work with it’s not uncommon for a piece of electronics to require a multi thousand dollar voltmeter, because they need to measure precisely extremely small voltages. We have a bunch of these in our lab for example: https://www.tek.com/en/products/keithley/digital-multimeter/dmm6500-6-5-digit-multimeter https://www.tek.com/en/products/keithley/digital-multimeter/... Your series of comments in this thread frankly demonstrate a lack of understanding of what electrical engineering is. Yes if you want to make glowing LEDs then a multimeter and other cheap equipment are all you need, and you might be able to learn that in a month. But electrical engineering is so much deeper than that. Trouble comes when you have things like high power circuits right next to sensitive high speed signals. Eg a compact drone motherboard could be driving potentially hundreds of watts of switching currents right next to high speed camera sensor data streams. There’s countless examples of what can make electrical engineering hard. If you don’t understand, don’t argue with people online - listen to people with experience and seek to understand why without challenging what surprises you. It’s all very interesting if you want to learn it.