while I was looking at the PCB design I felt it was a bit wasteful of space so I started from scratch and redid it. it is now just 3.5″x1.85″.
After looking for a board house to make up PCBs for this little endeavour I found that crazily if i get them made in the UK there are few people with on-line shops for that sort of thing. if I go to mainland Europe the best I can hope for is still £50+ but if I use Sparkfun’s little side company, BatchPCB, the cost drops off enormously. They only charge $2.50 a square inch plus $10 and then postage. What is crazy though is that it is actually manufactured in china. so my design goes to America, where it is then sent to china for production, then the board goes back to America and then from there to me and that’s cheaper than going down the road to get it done!!!
anyway, boards are now ordered and should arrive sometime this month.
14/03/2009 at 07:34 pm
So when you say ‘boards’ does that imply you have ordered more than one? If so will you be selling them extra or do you have a home for them already?
14/03/2009 at 08:01 pm
I have ordered 2 so that I can build one unit up as a beta version to be tested, and a second I will keep so that I can make firmware upgrades and test them on exactly the same unit that the beta tester will have. since sending the design off I have already found a few mistakes so there will be another version at least after this one, if you want to build your own one there is so little there you could build it on strip board. I will tidy up the schematic and post it up here and a hex dump of the current software.