Reviahh has published a new build, the PICKit 3 Mini: Previously, I made a Pickit 3 clone – (see previous blog post). It works well, but I have often wondered just how little of its circuitry was needed to program and debug the boards I make. For instance – I primarily use the newer 3.3V PIC32 […]
Category Archives: PCBs
PCB Businesscard Nextgen: NFC enabled
A followup to the PCB business card post, Sjaak writes: Designing a PCB business card seems to be the go-to for a hobbyist electronic engineers. Most people design either a passive PCB, USB HID/MSD device or battery powered LED frenzy. Uptill now I haven’t seen any cart that has a RFID, not even regular paper […]
Pimp your PCB businesscard full color
Here is a nice PCB businesscard @ smdprutser.nl As a good electronic hobbiest tradition I started to design a businesscard from PCB material. Downside of all the businesscards (and PCBs in general) is the limited number of colors you can use: FR4, soldermask (with or without copper behind it), silkscreen or bare copper. Since the […]
Panelization – using GerberPanelizer on Windows (Linux possible)
Arsenijs over at Hackaday.io writes: This tutorial was done on Windows. Authors claim it could also be used on Linux by using Mono, but I haven’t tried and don’t understand a lot about Mono to see what could be done. I am switching to Linux nowadays, so I’d be very grateful to anybody that’d make instructions […]
ESP8266 LED lighting: QuinLED v2.6 PCB
Quindor designed and built an ESP8266 LED lighting QuinLED project with Dirty Board PCBs: It’s been a long time in the making but I’ve finally put the final touches on my newest revision of QuinLED! This makes it version 2.6 rev 1.00. Let’s check it out! This post is part of a series – The index for […]
Printed Circuit Board V-Groove cutting machine
This is how V-Grooves are cut into PCBs. V-Grooves are half-cuts into the PCBs that allow them to be snapped apart easily. Minimum V-Groove cut length in generally 8cm due to machine cutting length. V-Grooves must be cut across the entire PCB length, it is not possible to make short internal cuts. This is from […]
A dual sensor fan controller build
Kerry Wong has designed and built a dual sensor fan controller: To make the design more useful, one channel is marked as optional (see components with * on the silkscreen) so that you can build either a single sensor fan controller or a dual sensor one. With two sensors, the control signal is or’d with both […]
Bi-directional voltage level translator – Board house test
Lukas Fassler from Soldernerd shares his experience with DirtyPCBs: I can think of a lot of situations where it could be useful. But the main reason for this project was to gain some experience with getting a PCB professionally manufactured by a board house. For several years I have done my own designs but I always milled […]
OTGW panel
Onno designed and built his own OTGW panel with Dirty Board PCBs: Added all together and had a working gateway. This gateway has also connections for status LED’s. However, I didn’t find anything about getting the LED’s connected and build in the housing. So there started the first idea of designing my own PCB. I’m someone who […]
Pressure, temperature and humidity sensor based on MS5637 HDC1080
Mare writes: This is another small module to measure air pressure, temperature and humidity. Two sensors are on-board: MS5637 and HDC1080. Microcontroller is small cortex M0 in TSSOP-20 housing from STM: STM32F070CxP. The SN65HVD72DGKR provides RS485 interface functionality with half duplex mode. Voltage regulator, reverse polarity protection and some LED indicators are provided on-board. Complete […]
Dirty PCBs review from Big Mess o’ Wires
Dirty PCBs detailed review by Big Mess o’ Wires: Now for the key question: were the boards any good? From my inspection, I’d say mostly yes. I spent a long time examining the boards under 10x magnification, and comparing them to my original EAGLE files, and to the Gerbers using gerbv. Probably I’ve never examined any […]
Quick PCB: TCXO Breakout
Dan Watson has published a new build: There are some good, inexpensive TCXO modules on eBay that come in the slightly unusual package shown above. This breakout board allows you to mount one of the modules onto the small PCB and adapt it to standard 0.1″ breadboard-compatible headers. I have also included a few optional […]
An Android TV-stick baseboard
Necromant designed and built an Android TV stick baseboard: The idea was dumb simple. I needed a USB hub, since TV sticks don’t have many USB ports included. I needed GPIOs, so I threw in an attiny2313 that occupied one of the HUB’s ports, I needed a few relays and I wanted to control the […]
ChipStick – A small scale experimental Forth machine
Ken Boak blogged about his ChipStick PCB build: The ChipStick design has the following features: MSP430FR2433 with 15.5K FRAM and 4K SRAM External SRAM or FRAM device connected via SPI on USCI B0 CH340G USB to serial converter IC on detachable section of board 3V3 voltage regulator Reset Switch and User LED 20 Pin DIL footprint to allow insertion […]
Having cheap PCB’s made, part 2
Batches of PCBs from Ivo of Knutsel.org: The first batch was a new run of the LivingColors Arduino shield. The second batch was a breakout board for the NiceRF SX1276 LoRa module. Here I experimented a little with contour routing. The third batch was an adapter board to use no-name CC2500 modules in boards designed for […]
Mini CW Keyer / QRSS beacon v1.1
Marko Pavlin has designed a PCB for the CW keyer, he writes: I designed dedicated PCB for the CW keyer. The project is very similar to the version made on prototyping board. Here are the updates: – I added relay and optocoupler for PTT control – The “CW melody” selection pins have three jumpers for 8 […]
Things to avoid when sending PCBs to the fab house
Sjaak shared some tips when sending PCBs to the fab house: I usually collect a few PCB designs before sending them off to the PCB fabhouse. Recently, I embarked on a project centered around online casinos with instant withdrawals and no KYC, which necessitated specialized PCB layouts to ensure secure and efficient transaction processing. I […]
ESP8266 breadboard adapter board
Markus designed a single-sided ESP-12/ ESP-07 breadboard adapter PCB: Features are: – Fits ESP-12 and ESP-07 module – Single-sided self-etchable design – Few, cheap parts in SMD – Breadboard-style – one row on each side accessible – Vin >4.5V (max. 7V) input possible with 3V3 onboard voltage regulator (with two capacitors 10µF) – Power-indicator LED […]
Crystal Ladder filter
Dan Watson writes: Here’s a little board for making a four pole crystal ladder filter. This type of filter has a very high Q and narrow bandwidth, allowing you to select a specific frequency from your signal. Because of the narrow bandwidth, selection of the capacitors and tuning of the filter is important to achieve […]
Freescale’s sensors breakout boards
Freescale’s sensors breakout boards from Juan Ignacio Cerrudo: MMA8541Q, FXOS8700CQ, MPL3115A2 and Logic Level Converter: The MMA8451Q is a low-power, three-axis accelerometer with 14 bits of resolution. It communicates over I2C, has built in tilt/orientation detection and also tap detection. More details at ssihla site.