[talldayo]

> Strongly considering moving to Shenzen to build the prototype.

That seems like a profoundly personal decision that would have more ramifications than you expect.

Breadboarding should be possible, same with soldering together prototype PCBs as long as you're not concerned with wearing the prototype yourself. There's also (albeit expensive) circuit modelling/validation software you could try to use. I don't think many circuit designers have a workflow where they perpetually buy finished prototypes to check if they're working or not, though.

[RohKo]

Interesting I see. I'm moving from breadboarding to PCBs because I'm using ICs which are way too small to solder by hand and I've already prototyped with their off-the-shelf dev board versions.

[xargon7]

Consider ordering reusable chunks of your circuit as PCBs instead of iterating on entire boards. You can connect the chunks with breadboards or connectors or something.

[jon-wood]

How small is "too small" here? I'm by no means an expert at soldering but with some patience I can hand solder down to 0603 components, and I know people who can go much smaller than that (right down to the sort of thing where if you sneeze finding the components you just scattered around is like finding a specific grain of sand on the floor). You can get practice boards for next to nothing online if you don't want to risk damaging high value components.

[niccl]

yup. I can do 0402, and I've poor eyesight and hands that shake more than I'd like.

[mikeInAlaska]

It's just faster and easier to iterate PCBs anymore than large breadboard creations.