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Comment by StavrosK | Hacker News Reader

I just realized that I have a problem, where I think "why would I pay $50 for a PCB that I can design and make myself?" and then conclude "therefore nobody would pay".

Maybe I should start selling some of the PCBs I made.

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FWIW,

I would say that knowing how to design boards makes me MORE willing to buy other people's boards. Coming from a more mechanical background, I don't look forward to the tedium of reviewing and modifying all the footprints of "standard" sized SMD parts.

I like making music effects for friends, and branching out to things related to motor control, LEDs, sensors, etc. I prefer to have them pick and placed for me. Since an injury a few years ago, I battle vertigo when doing extended fine detail work.

I would be interested in seeing some of the designs, you've always been an interesting person to read from here on HN. Tindie makes that easy.

Your comment made me realize that I only enjoy building things when they have a component of learning, or when it's something I haven't done before. I have a similar problem where my vision goes blurry at the center if I focus near for long, but I've found that magnifying glasses help with that because they change the focal length.

> I would be interested in seeing some of the designs, you've always been an interesting person to read from here on HN. Tindie makes that easy.

Thanks for the tip and the compliment! My latest design is a flight controller I made for a remote controlled paper airplane, it's nothing fancy but has some good caveat solutions that might be worth posting.

I'll look into Tindie and possibly upload there, thanks again!

It is also the learning aspect for me. And doing projects for friends helps to force good design decisions, and to mind BOM cost.

I ended up with "cervicogenic dizziness." I was forced onto team standing desk a couple years back. And I'm only 40. SMH...

Anyways, I think my 6 year old would love to play with paper airplanes that also could be flown remotely.

Ah, that's too bad about the dizziness... We're getting old, alas!

The controller works fine, but I still need to do some work on the aerodynamics of the body to make it fly well. I'll post the controller so you can try your own aircraft designs, though.

EDIT: I've also recently started live-streaming my design sessions (of whatever I happen to be designing at the time) here: https://www.youtube.com/c/StavrosKorokithakis

lol I love your thing that turns off the lights when you blink to save on electricity.

Hahaha, thanks, I found that hilarious and loved how low-latency it was.

> I only enjoy building things when they have a component of learning, or when it's something I haven't done before

Yes, yes, yes and yes.

This comment came at the perfect time since it's something I've been thinking about all morning and it even relates to PCB's :-)

I think I'm the same way. I have bare boards here (PCB designed and came back from fab), a stencil, paste and trays of parts. AND a customer and a damn healthy profit margin.

So why haven't I assembled, tested and shipped the boards I should have almost a week ago? Well, that's the question and I think your answer crystallized it perfectly for me. The fun part of solving the problem and coming up with a solution is done. Actually building and testing these things is BORING and I have to force myself to do it even though I know shipping just two boards will cover this month's car payment.

I was thrilled and excited to ship the first ones: precision analog electronics, a four-quadrant multiplying DAC and a domain I enjoy working in (machine control). But now that we're up to Revision 4, I am so effing bored with it.

The seller provides all the Gerber files, BOM, etc. https://github.com/gcormier/megadesk

But it's pretty clear many are buying the pre-assembled kit. Hand soldering SMD components is pretty tedious.

I bought one of the kits and assembled it myself (although it looks like kits aren't currently for sale.) The only hiccup I had during assembly is the random board profile I found in the Arduino IDE had the chip layout reversed which took me a few minutes to figure out based on the source.

The pin spacing on J2 looks like it would need a pretty steady hand to me. Though it appears only 3 of the pins matter.

I have access to a SMD oven (just a toaster oven with a fancy controller.) Manually applied solder paste, placed the parts and they flowed just fine. Same process with a hot air gun should work but will be a little more finicky.

I'll have to try that out. I suspect I'd still have trouble like accidentally shaking the components off center while putting them in the oven.

Yeah there was an issue a while ago with the ATTiny library and they switched the pin definitions. Was indeed a frustrating time to figure that out initially when the library switched it and all of a sudden everything stopped working!

Low temp solder paste, a laser cut stencil, and a hotplate makes it pretty easy.

Yes, please feel free to build it yourself ;) Initially I offered kits as well - buy the PCB and all the parts to build it yourself.

I think I've sold about 6 kits total in more than a year since the last time it frontpage'd HN. It just wasn't worth keeping track of them and then effectively being a middle man for digikey. A lot of people want plug and play.

Time is golden, just because I could do something myself doesn't mean spending all that time on it is worth it.

Ah, but I enjoy building.

I enjoy building, too. But there are so many things for me to build that I don't mind paying for shortcuts so I can use my limited time to build things I want to be building.

Personally, there's many things I enjoy but I try to focus on the ones I enjoy most. Which for me is generally things I haven't done before. Spending money rather than time is one means to enable that.

Even if your audience is other people who enjoy building, it can work because they might build on top of your thing. Think about an arduino. It's open source, and so maybe you could build it yourself, but there's all sorts of other fun stuff that you can build when you can just throw money at that part. It unlocks projects.

it's a general problem for developers to pay x money for something they could build themselves for y hours where y hours are worth x*10 money, even if you will not use y hours to build it yourself. But since the world has lots of people in it if even 10% of the people who can build something decide to pay for it that can be a profitable business.

This is why I made it open source. For those who have the time or drive, or enjoy it, they can get everything they need to do so themselves!

I think this must be true of software, too; I have thought, from time to time, "that'd be neat, but there's no way I could sell it", or even just "that'd be neat, but nobody else would want to contribute" (for FOSS). But... the same logic would imply that a lot of things shouldn't exist that do. Why do any of the BSDs exist, why does redox exist, why are there so many programming languages, why are there so many package managers, ... maybe, if I think it's neat enough to build, other people would want to use it. Maybe, if I would pay for it (if only someone would sell it), others would, too.

Oddly, I don't have that problem with software at all. I think it's the hassle of shipping that makes me think that, whereas software is deliverable immediately.

a) You can design and make it; I can't. I have basic electronics knowledge and that is definitely more advanced than anything I'd get done in a reasonable time.

b) Speaking of reasonable time, it'd probably take even you more than $50 in time, material and parts (mostly time) to make this. This doesn't look like the kind of PCB that you'd hand-solder either, bringing us to...

c) Making 1000 of something tends to be cheaper per item than making 1 of something, and I'll gladly take an option that's not only cheaper than anything I could make myself, but also ready to use.

You definitely should share your PCBs by producing them at scale if you're willing to do that.

Making a PCB is pretty cheap, even making 10 PCBs costs around $15 nowadays. I usually panel my PCBs so I fit 40-100 in a batch, depending on size (and then only use one).

I usually share my designs, the ones I've uploaded have links to the manufacturer where you can order them, though I haven't really done assembly on any, yet. I might, if any design has people interested, though.

Part of the costs is that I do assemble these by hand! My right arm is the pick and place machine.

I try to do batches of 25 at once, as any more and I want to smash something. I have an SMT stencil for all the SMT parts, and then put them in the oven.

The pin header is through-hole (will be stronger then SMT header) so it's done by hand.

Then going over everything with a loupe to look for solder paste that hasn't flowed or other issues, programming each one, and then verifying the functionality of each one on my own desk (see the video of the testing process).

All in all, quite a bit of my time, and not yet factored in is the entire logistics (storefront, shipping, customer support)

Unfortunately as it's a small operation, I also can't afford to buy these parts in what would be considered a big quantity - so I'm still paying fairly high costs. The jellybean capacitors and resistors I can order in real bulk (500), but the IC's and voltage regulators are name brand from DigiKey.

Are these too small amounts to order fully finished products from somewhere with a pick-n-place machine, or is there another reason why that isn't something you're doing?

Definitely!

- First of all, a PCB that I design and make myself would cost me way more than $50, counting my time

- $50 is nothing for a person with a fulltime job

- I have a family and busy life. Would love to make my own, but just don't have the time for all of that.

I envy you. When it comes to this, I am severely challenged. There is a market for people who want to play, but have no affinity for building hardware. I don't know how big it is, but if you have something interesting, I would share it.

Hey, I started a few years ago with an Arduino and have dabbled on and off, I haven't really spent much time. I'm not great at hardware, but I know enough to have fun with it.

I would really recommend grabbing an Arduino and just making stuff, I think you'll love it and it's really not hard. They've done a great job making it beginner-friendly.

adafruit has made money on it.

There's money on providing easy to use hardware.

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