[auto]

I love this. I've been a professional dev for almost a decade now, and over the last couple of years have started migrating toward a blend of hardware and software/firmware development, and I can't get enough of learning to build physical things from scratch. I don't often get to iterate in this way at my job, and rebuild the same thing over and over, so I tend to spend my free time with projects like this that start out shitty, and you get to take the time to comb over the details, making constant prototypes.

I started a deep dive in electronic music and synthesizers in the last couple of months, and have been thoroughly enjoying playing the productions units I own (Korg Monologue, Elektron Digitakt, Roland JV1080), but have even more so enjoyed the sort of free form effort of building my own instrument:

https://imgur.com/a/FZ6GFsI

That started out as a nightmare breadboarded voltage controlled oscillator, to a nicely breadboarded vco, to a rebuild on perf board, and then obviously I needed a perfboard power supply. But, once I wanted a mixer, I needed +/- 12v, not just 5v, so that led to a better iteration of the power supply, etc. It's a rabbit hole, but an immensely educational and fairly inexpensive one. I figure I'm about 3 months and a couple of YouTube tutorials away from my first Kicad developed oshpark printed PCB, and I have a ton of ideas for next steps, and prototypes in flight (CES3340 based VCO, Arduino MIDI control and CV translation, Lowpass/bandmiss filters, so on and so forth).

Back to the subject of the original post, this totally looks like Pennsylvania, and if it is and the engineer who built this is in the job market, and has any interest in working for a smaller, established (20 year) shop that lives in one of the automotive spaces doing a lot of cool custom hardware/software development, I'd happily accept a resume.

[stevekemp]

Similar story here, developer then sysadmin, but I decided I wanted to have a hobby and "physical stuff" seemed interesting.

When my child was born I spent my paternity leave getting started with Arduino, and ESP8266 devices. These days I've kinda stalled, but there's something fun about making the hardware and the software, and getting back to the limits I used to "enjoy" with limited RAM/flash-space.

Mostly my projects are put together for learning, then the parts are recycled, but there are a few projects dotted around the house that have stayed in-place for a couple of years now.

(Wireless temperature/humidity sensors, along with tram-departure information, etc.)

[auto]

We use the ESP8266 extensively at work, great little micro.

[cowbellemoo]

Awesome vco build! Have you read the MAKE book about building the Noise Toaster? It's great!

I ran into my own discouraging brick wall when trying to figure out how to fabricate metal control panels/enclosures and printing labels on them without expensive cutting equipment.

[auto]

Thanks man! I have not read the book yet, my synth education has basically been a ton of googling, the synthdiy and synthesizer subreddits, muff wiggler, and all the awesome old school websites like mfos, birth of a synth, ken smith's designs, etc. I always knew of electronic music production and had some friends who are super into the DAW way of doing things, but I had no clue the level the hobby/eurorack scene was at.

[StavrosK]

Oooh you should learn how to route PCBs, you're going to love both the process and the result.

[auto]

I've definitely done some research into a few different manners of making my own PCBs, but I'm trying to find the right balance of doing things myself vs. time/cost associated. Since the majority of the PCB learning is going to be around KiCad, and I'll just be able to send the files along with $15 off to oshpark and get perfect boards in a week or two, it's hard to start the investment of fully custom boards.

[StavrosK]

> Since the majority of the PCB learning is going to be around KiCad, and I'll just be able to send the files along with $15 off to oshpark and get perfect boards in a week or two, it's hard to start the investment of fully custom boards.

I'm not sure what you mean here. Since it's just KiCAD and then you can get boards for cheap, why is it hard to start the investment?

[auto]

Sorry, when I saw fully custom I mean printing designs on photo paper and doing the chemical, as opposed to just having oshpark print them.

[StavrosK]

Oh, no, that's too much hassle, I meant KiCAD instead of perfboard.

[earleybird]

Came across this little PCB mill just today: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCX44z-SSL7LzcB4xxgUdHHA

[joshvm]

I used to make PCBs at home, first using toner transfer and ferric chloride (never again, impossible to avoid staining everything in your lab), then with a UV lithography mask (photoresist and a laminator) and an exposure box used for making stencils. The UV stuff is actually pretty good, you can easily go down to 0.5mm pitch with some practice. Etching is still a pain, but I started using a clear etchant (sodium persulfate?) which at least didn't stain everything. I briefly experimented with laminated and cured solder masks, but that's also tricky. Never got round to silkscreening, though apparently you can do it with coloured foils.

Drilling is a pain in the ass. The bits break easily and drilling accurately, even with a press, is hard. Milling makes this so much easier. Then you need to think about plated through holes, do you rivet? Do you just put some 30 gauge wire and solder?

Nowadays I find I rarely need to rush boards and Oshpark is so cheap it's ridiculous. There are cheaper companies (I've yet to try Dirty PCB), but you get 3 boards, ENIG and really good tolerances for free. Even rush shipping ($20 international fedex) is cheaper than getting it done here in the UK. The only competitor I've found is Ragworm, and they're both more expensive and you only get one board with HASL.

Unless you really want a board made now, I would say just get them made for you. The quality is so much better without spending tons of time. Of course sometimes you really do want a prototype instantly and if you want to make a weird shape - perhaps a really long rectangle that would cost a fortune to get made, it's worth having the kit in your house to do.

On the milling side, I'd be tempted just to buy a Spokeo mill which can apparently do reasonably good PCB milling. Costs a lot, but at least it'll do other things as well.

I've recently got access to a lab with some very expensive rapid protoptying kit (from LPKF), which I'm keen to try out. It can even do 3D PCBs laid onto plastic components.

[StavrosK]

That's what I do as well. I switched to JCLPCB from Dirty PCBs and am pretty happy, but I was pretty happy with Dirty as well. They give me ten 10x10cm paneled boards for like $15, and because I design tiny boards I get around 100 of them in the end, which is 99 more than I reasonably need. It's so cheap, though, that it's not worth doing anything else.

[auto]

This is where I'm at. If we see absurd leaps and bounds made in the homebrew milling/printing scene in terms of speed, cost, performance, then I'll start down that path, but for the time being the race to the bottom in terms of cost in small run PCBs is just too good for the consumer that it's hard to justify going totally homebrew.

[auto]

The homebrew 3D printing/milling scene is turning into such a cool, viable space these days. There's not enough time to build all this cool stuff!

[trollied]

What did you use for a power supply, out of interest? I've been dabbling with synths & info about power supplies seems to be the major thing that's lacking.

[auto]

Originally, my 5v was just an Arduino wall wart wired into the whole thing with these:

https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/474-PRT-10811

Now I'm using the same barrel jacks, but with an old linksys wall wart.

That said, it's not an ideal situation, and I'll most likely build something like this in the not too distant future:

http://musicfromouterspace.com/analogsynth_new/WALLWARTSUPPL...