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Comment by jvandonsel | Hacker News Reader

I've always used protoboard and hand-wiring for all my home projects. Is it worth the time and effort to layout a PCB and have several fabricated for a one-off project? Do the aesthetics of a PCB win out?

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One more factor to consider is time. If you have all the parts already on hand and want to make it now you will probably choose the protoboard. But if you will have wait a week for parts to arrive anyway and the cost of board (for the specific project) is negligible might as well order the pcb in parallel. For a simple board that you could do on protoboard, the layout process on a computer shouldn't take much effort either.

The comment about more easily mounting certain parts applies not only to SMD parts, but can also apply through hole components. You protoboard will probably have 0.1 inch spacing between holes, just like most DIP ic packages, and you can bend resistors and capacitor legs however you want. But there are occasionally some through hole components like buttons, switches or specialized connectors which might have a different requirements. Trying to workaround those can result in a bit janky result. And if you are making something practical you want to use daily, having something more robust and less janky can be nice even for a one off project.

At the end of day it's one more tool in your toolbox. And different people make different kind of hobby project with different needs. I recommend you to try doing it a few times so that you are familiar with the process and overcome the stage where you avoid it just because you have never done it. Afterwards for your future projects you can choose the method that's best suited for specific project.

Being familiar with more tools can also open you doors to new projects that you wouldn't try otherwise.

Hand built boards are great for getting something done right now. It's also a fun sort of challenge sometimes.

Just drawing up a PCB can take as much time as building out the same circuit on perfboard. Manufacturing and shipping obviously adds even more time.

Take this next part with a mountain of salt. Things vary wildly based on circumstance, but in general it's easier to make mistakes on perfboard. They're less resistant to physical damage from handling, impact, vibration. They're harder to repair, especially if any time has passed between design and repair.

You should choose a PCB if your circuit:

- needs to last a long time

- must be repairable by another person

- will be produced more than once

- will be anywhere other than a box that never leaves the bench

- has physical or mechanical constraints from the enclosure

Personally, I find joy in building quick and dirty circuits on perfboard. But I get the same joy from a well-designed PCB.

You don't really have a choice if you wanna use high quality SMD parts, like a SOT-3 and a LQFP 32 or something.

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That being said, there is a lot you can do with hand wiring and DIP parts. And Microchip still makes PDIP uC like AVR DD, ATtiny, MCP6002, and other important parts for projects.

So PDIP / through hole is still alive, but you gotta set your expectations way low. All the MOSFETs and OpAmps and such are just worse, all good parts these days are seemingly surface mount only.

You can use surface-mount-to-DIP breakout boards. They add a buck or two per part, but that's generally OK for prototyping.

That is essentially going out of your way. It's like forgetting why you were using THT and perfboard in the first place. Maybe not technically, because sure you could have a stock of common adapter blanks already on hand, allowing you to build right now, which was the point, but it's getting very close to blowing that point if you're using smt parts on adapter pcbs on tht perf boards.

I guess it's still practical while still developing on solderless protoboards.

I'm not sure what you're saying... there is a clear benefit to perfboard and protoboards: they let you prototype instantly, without waiting for PCBs to be manufactured. An earlier critique of that approach was that some parts are no longer available as through-hole. I'm pointing out that there is a simple workaround that still lets you prototype quickly. Generic breakout boards are around $1 a piece and you don't need them custom-tailored to a project.

There are other benefits: A PCB design can be shared so that others can fabricate it themselves. (Or modify it if they wish). A PCB design will likely have a schematic, too, which can be studied.

I'd also bet that PCB projects are more likely to inspire better PCB projects. -- Or at least, the domain I've tried my hand at has been PCBs for custom mechanical keyboards.

e.g. I've seen boards inspired by https://github.com/hsgw/plaid such as https://github.com/coseyfannitutti/discipline or https://github.com/rtitmuss/torn and I think there are several popular split keyboard designs which basically descend from https://github.com/MakotoKurauchi/helix

If a project calls for 3+ of the same board, then PCBs become worth it quickly, in my opinion.

Even more than aesthetics, I've had a few projects where an unpopulated board outlives any other remnants of a project and so becomes the last remaining document/example of how it was done.

It really depends on what your going to use it for. It's necessary if you want to use surface mount parts with a fine pitch. Or anything with a really wonky footprint. I find it's quite useful for the mechanical properties, being able to size it to the exact enclosure and put mounting holes where needed. And you can print cool art on them for the extra wow factor :) I particularly like OSHpark's after dark board for this, drawing in the copper layer looks fantastic with them.

In general I find it's not worth it for a weekend project but if you are going to be looking at it often and want it to last, definitely worth it.

It's so convenient to draw a perfect board in kicad and have it delivered at about the same time as the parts arrive from digikey, it's all I ever do. I have some protoboards, and have never actually used a single one.

100% worth it. Modern ICs don't work on perfboard... Actually, I'm not even sure where to begin. Download KiCad and experiment.

If it is just that you can mount them on adapters or deadbug them.

So many chips are surface-mount only these days, there's little choice.

Yes and no. I used protoboard to put my permanent WLED setup together. The complexity of the ESP32 is contained on its own board, the I2S microphone came from Ali in breadboard friendly form, the IR Receiver and LED terminal block were leaded components, etc. Protoboards are a good option for making anything you've built up around an ESP or Arduino on a breadboard more permanent as long is it doesn't have to stand up to rough handling. This covers a lot of ground in the maker community.

Aesthetics don't matter. Being able to route multi layer boards matter.

"Is it worth" is entirely subjective, I don't think someone who's happy with perf board particularly cares about RF performance or routing complex BGAs against the increased complexity of debugging a multi layer design. In general I would think that if you aren't sure you need a multilayer board, you probably don't.

The more layers, the easier to design IMO. You have to do more QC when placing a via, and there's more layers in general to flip between, but routing puzzles become easier.

I find having access to traces to cut and probe to be a lot more important for hobby projects (that usually don't go through a simulation first). Routing is a very simple exercise below RF. YMMV though, exact application and goal probably matters more for this discussion.

Up to a point for sure. You can even just keep it as a breadboard without the perf.

I always breadboard the design before going to the cad.

For any smt parts I try to use prototadvantage on top of it as well

http://www.proto-advantage.com/store/

It will save you hands-on time overall for all but the simplest projects, but of course you have to wait a few days for delivery. It may be more or less fun for you, why don't you try it on your next project?

making PCBs is probably easier than you think, it doesn't take that long to learn the basics or to lay out a simple board

I’m a hobbyist and I’ve tried to pick up kicad but found it absolutely overwhelming. Any tips on how to get started?

I found Horizon EDA more intuitive. The developer is also really responsive.

https://horizon-eda.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

check out the kicad tutorial series from digikey, thats pretty good

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vaCVh2SAZY4

(1) Find someone you can pester with questions. (2) Understand the basic workflow. (3) Start by copying and modifying existing designs. (4) Build solutions using functional modules, and version these. (5) Bench test everything. (6) Be aware of startup and edge conditions when designing. (7) Take notes on all design changes or prospective changes, hypotheses and findings. This process will greatly accelerate your learning. This is easier if you have LXI-capable equipment and can capture test information easily. https://github.com/lxi-tools/lxi-tools

I found the Getting to Blinky series to be very easy to follow:

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLy2022BX6EspFAKBCgRuEuzap...

I'm also a hobbyist. It's daunting, but there are a lot of good videos on Youtube.

I think the most frustrating thing is just trying to find the correct symbol and footprint for the part you want. Sometimes they're hard to find because you have to understand Kicad's organization scheme. Sometimes what you want isn't there at all so you have to make your own symbol or footprint or both. (Which, to be fair, is reasonably easy to do.)

Exporting a Kicad project's gerbers and drill files to JLPCB is surprisingly easy, but to use their pick and place service is more work. (I just ordered an assembled board for the first time, and had to manually reposition all the parts in their web interface because the position file put all the parts offset way off to one side and with the wrong rotation. Not sure if I did something wrong or there's just a bug.)

I think Kicad just takes a long time to learn. There are a lot of very powerful features that you might not know about at first. Kicad also expects you to do things in a particular way, and if you don't it tends to cause problems.

Kicad 7 is out now, but I haven't tried it yet.

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