6 ms·
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.
by 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.
- rjh29 10d agoI agree with you, high frequency is a totally different domain. But for the majority of projects, you don't need to buy special equipment. It's very accessible and PCBs are super cheap to print nowadays. I am definitely bitter (and biased) because I frequent a PCB review subreddit and increasingly people show up with zero knowledge expecting people to review their AI-generated projects for free.
- tomhow 10d agoFair enough, thanks for the reply and for understanding. I can understand that must be frustrating. I actually think another benefit of AI is that it can make it more realistic for people to self-educate and get further towards getting devices working without needing free help from forums. How they get help when they get stuck, without pestering forums like yours for free help is an interesting challenge. I still think the biggest upside of AI in electronics is for people who are experienced and competent, being able to get the laborious design/layout work done more quickly, get errors found sooner, get their designs right in fewer iterations, and get feature-rich firmware written and debugged faster. If true, that alone can mean more high quality electronics products hitting the market. That’s the point I was making. Nothing to do with newbies freeloading off experienced engineers on forums. Thanks for the discussion.