If electronics is easy like lego then why aren't more people interested in building their own hardware with self designed pcbs and cheap off the shelf components like they do in China?
>>47571243
>If electronics is easy like lego
It's not. At least, when it comes to designing your own.
>>47571243
Probably because it's really hard to manufacture these, and China's manufacturing capability is a fair distance away.
Hell, even if you're dealing with China's manufacturing capabilities, you have to make a product that gets produced a few hundred times, and sell that.
They won't make you your device one time for cheap. The price is only reasonable with hundreds to thousands.
Tl;dr: Components often cheap, assembly of components into a modern device difficult - it's not easy.
1. You probably want to head over to >>>/diy if you want to discuss this seriously. This is /g/ - Consumer Electronics and Battlestations
2. For most applications, a ready-made part/device is already available. More often than not, designing your own shit takes a long time (plus you'll have to iron out the inevitable bugs) as well as a certain level of skill and experience (which again takes time to build) and will yield a less refined result than if you just bought something off the shelf.
In short, >>47571263 has it right.
>>47571276
everything about china is cheap, you can use a pcb sharing service and get 5 boards made and shipped for $25 with stencil
>>47571276
PS: It's worse if you want it all on a single chip made from semiconductors.
The respective fabs are $3-10bn or more, and they won't set up a production for you unless you order quite a lot.
Obviously they want to earn their $3-10bn back...
>>47571309
... uh, if you want to use a few huge components that go through holes and stuff, I guess that works.
Try doing that with a complex / interesting device like the ones we posted so far.
PS: If you don't have a complex / interesting device like that, it's mostly already available in a single component that is better, as >>47571279
already said.
>>47571335
nah, pcb sharing is pretty good
getting your pcbs made in china is already super cheap
they just take a few orders and get them all printed on the same sheet then break them up and send them to you, they have a pretty good trace pitch limit and you can choose how many layers you need
i cant even remember the site i knew, just found this one on google, seems a bit more expensive but hey still cheap
http://www.pcbcart.com/cart.php?target=product&556
>>47571335
>>47571442
the specs on that one are
>min trace pitch: 3mil
>min pin pitch: 0.3mm
which is more than good enough to build something basic like a battery charge/ vreg circuit which is what this is >>47571276
>>47571461
What if someone wants to make something more complex? Like a small motherboard (like nuc's or like the mini atom based pcs)?
>>47571276
Getting a pcb prototyped and sent to you from China is really cheap. Guys in the custom keyboard community do it all the time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LqsXbJn3yg
>>47571335
>if you want to use a few huge components that go through holes and stuff, I guess that works.
Git good at soldering faggot.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Z7nCAxS2Rg
>>47571461
That does not seem to include soldering on all those tiny SMD components.
That realistically leaves most people with through-the-hole boards. Which would make something like >>47571276 really rather big.
>>47571638
>tiny SMD components
What are tweazers?
What is liquid solder?
What is hot air soldering?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dube38fpLtc
>>47571622
>>47571718
Yea, good luck with that.
Not only can't this really work well with the many small, closely grouped components like all of the above have, you also need decent skills and expensive-ish equipment that can find out if you busted your SMD, individually. Because it will happen.
Or alternatively, tons of time to desolder shit and "test" SMD by replacing them.
Protip: Even the Chinese use robots for devices based on SMD. Guess why?
>>47571724
Typical defeatist attitude.
>>47571461
>>min trace pitch: 3mil
>>min pin pitch: 0.3mm
>which is more than good enough to build something basic like a battery charge/ vreg
>something basic
>basic
>VRM
oh fuck, are you serious.
how are you gonna insulate all this shit?
at what speed it may work? 5khz? 10?
are trying to make a heater with largest power density?
thanks for a laugh, btw
>>47571243
because chips (re: CPUs) are notoriously hard to fabircate, because their components are so small
mind you op the whole Maker movement of the past 5-6 years is built on increased access to simple microcontrollers, like atmega328 or atmel chips. We're not at the point where you can just build yourself a CPU/motherboard up from scratch like you can with microcontrollers
>>47571561
then you have to git gud
it's more than possible with off the shelf components, you just have to be good at electronic stuff which most of /g/ is shit at because most of /g/ are skiddies that can't into things like capacitors or soldering
>>47571724
Ha. I have done some SMD stuff with a $12 RadioShack soldering iron. Smallest tip they sell for it, filed down to as thin as possible before the metal won't hold an edge anymore. It worked okay, though I don't doubt that stuff would be easier with proper tools, but fuck paying hundreds for a nice soldering station when I don't solder stuff that often.
>>47571243
>easy like lego
>>47571718
>implying you can reflow a BGA chip with a homemade oven
>>47574855
But anon, you can solder BGAs at home in your own toaster oven, at least for low pin-count BGAs.
Make sure to attach the thermistor very close to the BGA so that you get nice temperature readings for the oven controller.
Don't give up just because it's a BGA.
>>47571243
Building computers is. Electronics raw is like putting 1000x CRT's and unshielded microwaves in the same room and trying to get a compass to point north.
None the less, here's a keyboard I made.
Hope to build an ARM computer thing soon, then a phone, then an Intel UMPC. Babby steps.
>>47575302
Also, here's a copypasta I'm working on.
/g/iy
Recommended books:
Art of Electronics. Literally the bible. Those who insult it have often been beheaded.
(The one that started it all)
http://hforsten.com/making-embedded-linux-computer.html
(Possibly useful comments)
http://hackaday.com/2014/07/11/an-amazing-diy-single-board-arm-computer-with-bga/
(Inspired and derived from above)
https://github.com/hak8or/Embedded-Linux-System
(Comments and discussion from both this project’s developer and the dev from hforsten.com)
http://www.reddit.com/r/electronics/comments/3184up/inspired_by_henriks_embedded_linux_system_i_made/
(Possibly useful comments)
http://hackaday.com/2015/04/10/building-super-small-linux-computers-from-scratch/
http://dangerousprototypes.com/2015/04/07/embedded-linux-system/
(It’d be nice to dive out and try with your own chip selection rather than copying the above verbatim, bus as both above projects use the same chip the universality of resources is in question)
Where do I start with learning FPGA and Verilog/VHDL development?
I'd like to start experimenting with networking stuff, like building a L2 switch.
>>47571622
Fuck, I just designed a board with a 32u3, retrospectively I'm a fuck for using qfn.
It's funny, I made this thing without realising there's this whole subculture around building keyboards.
>>47571766
What am I looking at?
>>47575240
This picture defines autism very well. I would just get a new processor.
>>47575384
Look at the board, that's some custom high level cluster shit.
>>47575403
Then its very poor design and contingency planning. If you are building complex systems, having easily replaceable components should be the first priority.
>>47571243
>easy
>like legos
Then why aren't you designing new arm processors faggot?
>>47575240
How do those arching wires not introduce unacceptable clock skew and interference between them? Or is this just a low clock speed thing? And why not reflow the thing properly with a toaster oven to preheat the board to new melting point and a heat gun to spot heat to melting?
>>47575384
What, replace the whole board of chips? Sounds expensive.
>>47575412
Yes, and I bet the guy who soldered all those wires isn't the same guy who decided to use BGA instead of sockets. Sometimes we have to make the best of an expensive shit sandwich.
>>47575302
Nice PCB, but you have ~30 redundant vias (one on each button)
Look at the horizontal traces that connect the buttons. It starts on the top layer, via to the bottom layer, pass under the vertical traces , via to top layer, goes on for a bit, connects to 2nd button, then another via to bottom layer and so on.
You should be able to have the horizontal trace entirely on the bottom layer and 1 via per button to connect to it.
>>47575514
It's an FPGA, they run at a few MHz usually. This can work, what's confusing me is that those bare copper wires are obviously touching each other. He's shorting out all over the place, or am I missing something?
