Making circuits like it's 2018

The I2CDriver boards returned last week. Since I haven't written about it yet, this week is all about how prototyping stands right now. Things have changed a lot in the last couple of years in ways that few people expected.

When I made the original Gameduino prototype in 2011 I paid about $170 for a pair of boards. They arrived 13 days after ordering. It's Sunday night as I write this, and if I send out a design to JLCPCB to this evening, 10 PCBs will be in my hand on Friday afternoon. The price is $21 including shipping.

This is a real game-changer. In the old days you'd have to find ways to keep busy until the board came back. Much less so now. You can iterate weekly on a design without breaking the bank. This is what I did on SPIDriver. Instead of treating each hardware iteration as a big deal, it became just something that happened every week. Fast-iterating hardware isn't hard, but it does require a certain attitude adjustment. It still feels strange to take last week's prototypes and throw them in the trash.

So the bare PCB came back. It still has to be assembled, right? Assembly used to involve hours with a soldering iron. But now you can order steel solder paste stencils for $10, buy a cheap IR reflow oven and some paste, and have an assembled board in minutes. My kid assembled this I2CDriver prototype in 20 minutes. It worked first time. (I mean the prototype, not the kid.)


JLCPCB is probably the "real" manufacturer for a lot of Chinese PCB services. That is, many other PCB companies are rebranding JLCPCB. A couple of people I have talked to have also come to this conclusion, but if I'm wrong, please hit reply and correct me! Here are three ways you can take advantage of their service:

They always offer the first board for $2, provided it's green, standard thickness, etc. If you do want a special board, it still makes sense to also order a "plain" board to take advantage of their $2 deal. If you have nothing specific to order, maybe just order 10 generic protoboards or some SMD breakout boards.

They also offer solder paste stencils in a variety of sizes. I order the frameless stencils because they're lighter, less bulky, and seem to work just as well as the framed version. I tape one edge of the stencil to a baseboard, then use four scrap PCBs to keep the actual PCB in alignment. The scrap PCBs are held down with double-sided tape. Works great.


You can order parts from LCSC up to 24 hours after the PCB order, and they will ship together for a few pennies increase shipping charge. I usually send out a board in my evening (morning time in Shenzhen) then next day run through the BOM to make the LCSC parts order.

Thanks for reading. Hopefully next week I2CDriver's firmware will be alive and I'll post pictures.

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