[snops]

Quite dangerous to leave this without an enclosure, since the power supply is on the same PCB, several of the components and solder points carry mains voltage.

I'm surprised an outlet as high profile as Make don't at least recommend one, or have any of the usual warnings about high voltage.

On a side note, it's no mean feat integrating large through hole components and tiny SMD parts onto the one PCB, normally power supplies are wave soldered while SMD parts need reflow instead, and hence TVs and the like use seperate PCBs. Pin-in-paste[1] is possible, but only with some parts, so maybe they used automated selective soldering[2] instead?

[1] https://www.7pcb.com/blog/the-application-of-the-pin-in-past...

[2] https://www.nordson.com/en/divisions/select/soldering-proces...

[sowbug]

From TFA: "... maybe build yourself a nice enclosure for the electronics ..."

[Bluestrike2]

At the very end. It also uses the word "maybe" to equivocate on the subject, and describing it as a "nice enclosure" both minimizes the importance and avoids mentioning the very dangerous risks. The sentence assumes prior knowledge on the part of the reader, which even for a site like Make, isn't always the case. People without that knowledge, who weren't necessarily the intended audience, find their way to these sorts of tutorials as well.

That doesn't detract from the article's interestingness by any means, but pointing out at least some of the risks is the sort of thing that should happen more often in them. The off-hand way in which the enclosure was mentioned detracts a bit, in my mind, from an otherwise interesting article. Maybe I'm overthinking things a bit.