I have a degree in Electrical Engineering and they didn't teach us this in school, so yeah... theres that. Thanks for making this approachable to the DIY'ers out there.
Same here. However we did get to solder some basic components like resistors, capacitors etc to a small PCB with already soldered MCU and we did some basic programming on it, but thats all. Should have been more of this kind of practical work...
Wow.. I'm shocked that this isn't something they would teach you in an EE course. I think working with electronics would only deepen your interest and understanding further. I also feel like this is a key aspect of what the majority of people would be interested in if they took it.
@@426F6F A university-level electrical engineering course teaching you how to design and order a PCB online would be like a mechanical engineering course teaching you how to change the oil in your car, an economics course teaching you how to open an online savings account, or a computer science course teaching you how to upload videos to RU-vid or host your own website. Those are all trivial things that you can learn on your own and not what uni degrees are supposed to teach you.
Sometimes I forget that I am a certified Engineer. Why did I ever bother going to college. I didn't learn any of this, so here I am. Humble beginnings. I just want to make a usb with a programmable screen that shows a QR when plugged in.
@@acevfx2923 yes societal pressure to them too. thats why everyone mentions they went to college out of turn, they know that's the only real purpose, social validation
Gateway drug... no kidding man! Got into Raspi, 3D printing, Microcontrollers like ESPs for things like WS8212s and WLED projects, Home assistant and other Raspi servers...last December. Yea... not enough hours in the day LOL. Especially when my real job as a communications engineer gets in the way....lol. I'm having way to much fun tinkering and being a maker. So much to learn which really is the best part. I'll strat a project, see a video or article on something new and get all excited all over again. But, I am finishing projects! Just shipped a Dinosaur Night Light to my Son for the newborn Grandson's room. D1 Mini running WLED (Amazing app) for WS8212 LEDs. Very happy with how it came out and friends and family have been heaping praise in me. Gotta say...it's pretty rewarding making things after 20 years of doing integrations for voice and data acquisition and analysis. Having PCB made is the next step to make projects look legit. So,, thanks for the help!
That's awesome to hear @Sabotage_Labs! You know right?? This is so scintillating, once you get into one area of this making space, you get drawn into all. I really love that you also share your projects with your family. Sure your grandson was real happy haha! I've been feeling a bit daunted about going into PCB design but I'm glad I ran into this vid. Looking forward to the new niceties to learn. And all the best with everything🎉
This video was amazing. No chit chat about useless stuff that makes the video way too long but didn't miss any important parts, showed process from prototyping with cables to end of design, and even included the ordering from a manufacter part. I'll look forward to watching more videos like this from you!
A few tip for novices to soldering. Always skip pins whenever possible. For example, if you’re soldering 10 pins in a row, do them in this order… 1, 5, 2, 6, 3, 7…. This prevents excessive heat build up in one area which can damage components and burn up traces. P.A.C.E. has some great videos on RU-vid. They are very old videos, but the laws of physics don’t change so it’s all still relevant!
Thank you. Finally, after all these years, after watching your video, I got started and designed my first PCB last night. It's now awaiting processing! Can't wait to see if the board comes out ok.
boards came in from JLCPCB today! they look so nice and everything fits perfectly! Not sure if it works yet (haven't had time to solder it all), but looks so professional!
@@imjustroyal6808 yeah it sort of did... everything went fine, PCB looks great, except when I powered it up, nothing happened... I realized I missed one important trace, the one that connects the incoming power to the rest of the circuit... lol! Thankfully it's through hole, so I just soldered a wire and it's all good. For v2 of the PCB, I have added the missing trace.
The curved traces are there for timing. They keep parallel paths equal distance to differential pairs, keeping impedances equal, therefore eliminating noise in the signals. In general, we should leave them in.
It is not about resistance, only about length and travel time. Most of the time we can make the approximation of quasi steady state. Meaning we assume current is constant or at least the signal travels all the circuit way faster than the current's changing. And there, from Maxwell equations (that are always true) comes kirschoff's laws. For data transfer, current isn't constant at all and has a pretty high frequency (the higher the more data/s we get). The approximation isn't realy correct because the circuits length isn't small enough compared to current's wave length. 2 bite emitted at the same time need to be received simultaneously, and so we try to make sure they have the same travel time.
When I made my first crude PCB, I had to draw the circuits on a copper-plated board and then dip it in etchant. Man, things have come a long way since then! Thank you for this tutorial!
THANK YOU!! I've had many schematics that i've wanted to create pcbs for but I thought "this is just another thing that I'm going to need to dedicate hours and hours to try and learn.....someday". I just created my first board and ordered it in under 2 hours, next time will be much faster. Thanks for showing how easy it really is.
I found this channel by searching and subscribed halfway through the first video. This is really, really good content and I expect to see this channel really blow up. I was a little nervous about making a PCB before watching this. After watching this, I feel zero hesitation. that’s pretty incredible for just a few minute long video. It’s still complicated but it’s no longer mysterious.
Thank you very much ive been modifying game systems for a long time and being able to have custom printed pcb's made exactly like i want rather than what is available to buy from others who have made something similar will make things so much easier and better for me so thank you very much.🙂👍✌
What the hell have i gotten myself into now… great now i know how to make my own PCBs and im gonna put them on EVERYTHING!!! Thanks boss this was just the simplified video i needed
You really blew through a whole bunch of things that would trip up a newbie. But you covered the highlights and the users can gain experience along the way. So many times I've wished that a video would just cover the high points and not bog down in the minutiae. You certainly did that with this.
Thanks for the video. I just used it to design my first ever PCB today. Nothing complicated but think I nailed it. Now just waiting on it to be manufactured and arrive!
Nice intro video. One point on safety. Unless people know what they are doing (I mean really know), they should not try to incorporate mains voltage in any of their designs as AC has several considerations to take into account like gaping and how to calculate trace thickness and width. Letting the magic smoke out of a PCB via AC is a much more serious issue than with low voltage DC.
I agree with you 100%. In fact, you'll notice that I pretty much don't mess with mains on my channel for that exact reason. PCB or not, making a mistake with mains is a much bigger deal than 5-24VDC.
I started getting into this line of thinking as I am about to build a new house. I want to have relays in the attic, along with esp32s to control the multiple lights for each area. To do this, I need to design a board for my custom solution. Good video to start me down the road into that mode of thinking.
Cool! I heard some manufacturers also provide a pre-assembled service? So instead of them only printing out the PCBs and you source and solder the components, they also source and solder the components for you! Would be nice if you could review this service!
If you want to keep your designs out of the cloud, KiCAD is another option. It's free, but the routing is manual. It even creates a rendered view of the project.
KiCAD is honestly the reason I put off doing this for so long. I’m sure it’s a great program when you get used to it but it was so overwhelming for me that I’d open it up, fumble around for a bit and then close it without saving.
This is amazing! I'm working on a WLED project to convert my Christmas light show to addressable LED's this year with X-Lights. I've been prototyping boards for my design, and I want to be able to set up my props different every year. This gets me the final piece of a compact board to drive 2-3 props and only have to feed 12V to the control box! Can't wait to receive my boards!
Wow, I've always wanted to start getting into creating custom PCBs, since my projects without them look awful and bulky haha. Great timing for the video!
Sweet, I love these tutorials Rob Nails it every time! I got a few multi sensors that started out as BRUH multi-sensors and have evolved into: temperature, humidity, barometric, LUX, sound level and motion detection and more. Using up almost every pin on a Node MCU. I think I want to add air quality by going from BME280 to a BME680 and then maybe finalize it to PCB but then I think of something else. Like maybe adding a screen to display NTP time.
hi great video a follow up would be great showing you how to design a smt board to be part assembled at JLCPCB as I am having issues around how to identify the SMT components.
Great video! Looking forward to trying EasyEDA. For my first board design I'm currently using Fritzing, which is simple but has rough edges. Eagle and KiCAD are too daunting for me. Thanks for the tip on larger traces for higher current. My project also uses 12v and could benefit from thicker power traces. I would have missed that without your video.
As always, love your tutorials! Do you think it's possible for you to make the "Final" tutorial for your motorized blinds playlist. The older video you show how to hook up everything step by step for newbies like me. This video was amazing but you stopped when the PCB was made. It would be awesome, and I know for sure everyone else thinks so too, if you made one more video continuing off of this showing us how to finish the project but using this PCB and then how to integrate it into Home Assistant. I'm new to all this including Home Assistant and would really love to do this for all the blinds in my parents' home. Keep up the great work!
This was a nice video to keep in my list. I've been playing around with a idea that at the moment will have me trying to Dr. Frakenstein two different PCB's functions for what I thought would be an already available product. I'm trying to create a battery operated, motion sensing, full rgb, fairy light rig for jewelry boxes I make to pair with jewelry I also fashion. I used to work on F-16's decades ago, and I'm a bit out of touch with my electrical skill/knowledge, but hope that this endeavor will shake some rust off one way or another. If it doesn't work, I'll do a bit of studying and head right on over to this PCB creation site. I really wish this thing that I'm trying to do would have been created already. C'est la vie I guess.
Copper planes are also beneficial in the manufacturing process of the pcb as not that much copper needs to be removed. Always fill your pcb with copper planes even if you're not connecting them to a net.
I tried to follow the tutorial you provided, but I got stuck with attempting to figure out how to create custom component (it's Adafruit's servo bonnet (ADA3416, the one with socket on top of it), and I use SDA / SCL pins). I needed to create footprint and layout for this but honestly I failed and gave up on this. I would appriciate guide through creating component if one is missing from library
Not sure if PCWay sponsored this video, but just a heads up that they will likely ask you not to use EasyEDA in sponsored vids as that's produced by a primary competitor. Saw this happen with another creator, but unfortunately none of the other PCB design tools are as easy for beginners as EasyEDA.
I found the hardest part of using that site you talk about is finding the correct components. I am not able to do surface mount. I only want to use through hole components. I have not found an obvious way to pick components based on that prefereance.
I would love to see a video on using a local voice assistant instead of Alexa or Google. From what I got so far, Rhasspy is the main software component, Pi's with Respeaker mic arrays are used as the satellite stations, and somehow Ada and Almond are maybe involved.
I don't know if there is a person in the world that wants to make this video more than me. However, they are all garbage. When a locally controlled and hosted voice assistant comes out that isn't terrible I will absolutely do a video on it.
Great video as always! Concise and to the point! Definitely going to do this to clean up my custom irrigation and garden light controller which (works but) is currently looking like a rats nest. 😁
I love the video. I have too many questions. How do I figure out what components I want to use? How do I understand the voltageI need to each components? Or him many voltage I need?
Oops sorry I said that first one wrong what I meant to say is pcb boards can work the way you want them to work I want to do one with model, trains and video game controllers doesn’t work like that?
9:17 I am kind of new to all this PCB stuff. What is it exactly that's being soldered? I understand he's using tin obviously. What else does he "put" in those holes to connect to the tin and thus to the PCB? It seems like he sticks some kind of pin of another component to connect to the PCB?
Hello, Do you have any suggestion for pcb mounting box? I need some for outdoor operation but still with WiFi and I'm unable to find some in which I can mount my pcbs. Thanks!
