PCBs: an increase in coolness

Haha! I followed through on my PCB threat - and now have a bunch of them waiting to be made somewhere in China. Fantastically using them actually brings the cost of the project down as with the introductory discount they came to less than £1 per item (including shipping). Given that this is less than the soldered mess on the strip-board it is a bit of a no-brainer to use the PCBs.

Given I had already put together the schematic to design the strip-board layout it was relatively straightforward to design the PCB. The massive advantage of PCBs is how close different signals can be routed. This and complete routing flexibility on both sides of the (two layer) board mean that the layout uses 25% less area with a large area with only flat components (for the battery to fit onto). Additionally the LEDs and pinouts are all now in far better locations which is a real help.

KiCad Rendering, gets even better when you actually provide
full 3d models for your components!

The Worms - this step was so straightforward, I don't know why I
have not done it before.

The things this design still misses is attachment points (not a problem if you just use hot glue...) and an on board Serial to USB converter. Given how straightforward the design and order process has been I may opt to move to surface mount components rather swiftly. This will reduce the required PCB area drastically (everything will be smaller), leaving space for drill holes and extra hardware, and the cost reduction (everything should be cheaper) will mean I have budget room for extra hardware. I may even have to start considering integrating in the RFID stuff and actually thinking about power consumption.

NOOOOOOOOOOOO - too polished, too complete, I NEED THE HOT GLUE AND 0-OHM SOLDER BLOB RESISTORS. Darn you engineering maturity, you can't get me that easily!!

This is actually quite a nice step for me. Previously I have always relied on Monsieur Miroshnikov to throw the PCBs together and order them (generally while I dove deep, deep into a pile of code), it is going to be a bit of a change to only have myself to blame when the power rails short out!

Next up in the immediate future is to sort out the enclosures for the proof of concept hardware. The new PCB design should permit easier packing into a box (see my comment about batteries). Everything will probably end up being be glued to the lid of a standard enclosure (with flanges for attaching to controls) just because that keep everything accessible. Of course the best bit will be drilling holes into the weatherproof box to let the LEDs peek out!