Cool that people are trying new things. And I sure hate waiting for a PCB order to make its way from Hong Kong or Taiwan to Nebraska.
I'm not sure I want the trade-off of having to try to fit my existing circuit into those pre-populated vias.
Part of the joy of PCB layout is trying to be "optimal". That might be optimal in board size, optimal in the elegance of the trace layouts. I even trying to minimize vias (or not have them altogether). With prefab vias, there will be kludges to work my own vias into those locations. And, honestly, the unused vias will annoy me as well.
I'm a sucker for solder masks, silkscreening… I think I am too in love with what I get back from Hong Kong and Taiwan.
My "quick prototyping" consists of breadboarding and trashy perf-board mockups.
That fitting problem sounds like an excellent job for a computer program! I wonder how many prebuilt PCB layouts would be necessary to fit most hobbyist requests.
So glad to see a Stephen Hawes video make the front page. I've been trying for a few years now to get discussion going around his opensource pick and place the LumenPNP[0]
His goal of bringing small scale manufacturing down to the workshop / home garage level is really inspiring and is especially relevant in the modern era of tariffs and economic upheaval.
To get good at something people need to get hands on experience and it needs to be affordable and relatively easy to use. The kinds of tools that Stephen is promoting make that possible and that's critical if we want people to get good at building things.
I was keeping up with them for a while, putting up with it/skipping bits (why am I a goblin or ghoul? What does that mean?) but had lapsed and forgotten about it until this submission.
I completely agree. I can't handle watching his videos for long, for similar reasons.
However besides the personal dislike, I think its worthwhile to stop giving so much merit based on advertising "open source" or "effort" or "presentation" etc, because frankly many of these YouTube "makers" and the "maker community" are misguiding a lot of people to make bad designs and waste time and resources. People ought to value correctness and quality a bit more, lest our things become even more enshittified than they are now. One would think that hobbies would be a refuge from disposable low quality shit... yet we get RPi Pico et al (which are arguably getting less shitty but still laughable compared to actually good MCU products) and the people who claim to "out do the big corp" by using a Raspberry Pi with an SDR dongle and saying they achieved $50000 of capability with $60 in parts..
Case in point, the Opulo PNP systems are significantly overpriced and have amateurish mechanical as well as circuit design that are worse than cheaper systems like Pandaplacer in terms of reliability and performance.
Explain how RP Pico (rp2040) is "low quality shit "compared to "actually good MCU products" (which are those supposed to be?)
I agree that Opulo PNPs are overpriced though, but I'm sure people getting these are aware that it's just a bunch of 20x20 aluminium profiles, 3d printer mgn rails, basic DC pump, etc and parts-wise there's nothing to justify the price, but they get them anyway because of entusiastic community engagement and support aspects - most importantly - in English. And it probably works just fine for the small scale projects they are used in.
I'm referring to their collective effort in MCUs, including RP2040 and RP2350. There are a bunch of issues that are now addressed but permanently makes me distrustful of them especially when combined with how uninteresting the hardware are
- Broken ADC design on RP2040 with nonlinearity at certain codes (and they're not fixing it)
- Shipping chips with exact part number of inductor and specific DCDC layout requirement (like come on, the Chinese are advertising zero decoupling capacitor required and you can route the USB right under the chip in funky shapes and everything "just works".. meanwhile RPi is doing this)
- GPIO current leakage (fixed with a stepping but I would hate to be those who bought a reel of the earlier stepping)
"Actually good MCU products" in my opinion are those with at least a reason to exist. For example the ubiquity of STM32, the radios of ESP32, the high compute of i.MX RT1172, the cheapness of PY32 et al, the low power of Ambiq chips, the reliability of Atmel/Microchip, the USB3 on CH569, the potential true MCU-level-SoC-capability on AG32, etc. When compared with these, RP chips are frankly not innovative at all (PIO does not unlock much actual capabilities besides party tricks). Combined with the general culture of people hyping RPi Pico chips, it results in a culture of ignorance and hype.
Erratas alone aren't a big deal, but the fact that they're happening with such basic things and for no innovation is not a good sign. We shouldn't give RPi a pass just because "it's the good old RPi that we know"
Stm32 chips are plagued with all sorts of issues and hardware bugs that are very easy to run into. In comparison rp2040 has surprisingly few major defects apart from its ADC implementation.
I see no mention of exact part number of inductor requirement in their hardware design guide, are you making shit up now? They are somewhat more particular in oscillator selection, and unfortunately don't include factory trimmed RC oscillator like most MCUs do these days.
> PIO does not unlock much actual capabilities besides party tricks
Ok, so you've no idea what you're talking about.
RP2040 is widely used in many projects because it has insane bandwidth for MCU in its price category. It can do 4 x 32bit reads/writes per cycle (if those ops are spread across 64kb x 4 memory banks), at 200mhz base clock, which gives theoretical maximum of 3.2 gigabytes per second bandwidth. That is pretty crazy.
This enables you to interface with or easily emulate many highspeed interfaces. And do things like 24ch 400mhz logic analyzers and similar. And this is what they are commonly used for (emulating memory cards, etc)
And that's a 60cent MCU. In this price range MCUs don't have 264kb of SRAM and 133/200mhz much less with two cores, that can push anywhere remotely this insane amount of bandwidth.
rp2040 additionally has human friendly and readable documentation, with truckloads of examples, and API that's pleasant to use. (can't exactly be said about stm32 ref manuals and APIs).
While it is not perfect (rp2040 ADC, and lacks encryption), some of those shortcomings have already been addressed in rp2350, with double sram (520KB at this price point!), floating point, even more PIO, more improved DMA channels and so on.
While cheap py32, gd32, apm32, etc are cool, but they just generic arm32 m0/m4.
A 10 cent 24mhz m0 puya with 3kbs sram, isn't particularly impressive when put next to 60cent rp2040 with 80x sram, etc
> Combined with the general culture of people hyping RPi Pico chips, it results in a culture of ignorance and hype.
You haven't opend an errata sheet of stm32 chips even once and you talk about ignorance.
rp2040/rp2350 are unironically one of the best MCUs on the market (esp. in their niche), both in documentation/API and price/perf and features/flexibility in doing highspeed interfaces/bandwidth.
I have read the docs, and like I said the point of STM32 is ubiquity. It's not a great design in other respects but it was once ahead of the envelope and that made it ubiquitous which made it king for longevity. There is no room for another "king" on that throne. Especially counting all the clones of STM32, it is basically a forever design.
Comparing a 60 cent chip to a 10 cent chip is itself crazy work. That's like a whole three stratums apart in terms of capability. Dammingly, you are forgetting about the cost of the external flash that it requires, when program flash is the main cost of MCUs. It shows you don't have much experience with this stuff.
> I see no mention of exact part number of inductor requirement in their hardware design guide, are you making shit up now?
They literally had to "work with Abracon to create a custom 2.0×1.6mm 3.3μH polarity marked inductor" like wtf
Besides how it looks like you weren't one of the early adopters (since RPi shipped one abracon inductor with every one RP2350 for a bit), you also clearly haven't designed a board with the chip in question.
> theoretical maximum of 3.2 gigabytes per second bandwidth. That is pretty crazy.
This is what I'm talking about, like honestly what capability does that unlock for you beside party tricks? Can you name anything meaningful beside "logic analyzer" and "some memory card?" Even disregarding that, what can you do with such thruput if you are bottled by USB 1 speeds and a core without FPU? It doesn't come close to being able to do interesting things like LVDS ADCs or actual high speed memory interfaces because of the bit width requirement, yet people will go into a frothing frenzy should you dare insinuate that RPi Pico might be kinda useless
> rp2040/rp2350 are unironically one of the best MCUs on the market (esp. in their niche), both in documentation/API and price/perf and features/flexibility in doing highspeed interfaces/bandwidth.
As you might surmise, I disagree. Go make some actual projects instead of "reading the docs" all day (though I must admit I do the same). Also, it sure looks like our definition of high speed differs by a wide margin
> Dammingly, you are forgetting about the cost of the external flash that it requires, when program flash is the main cost of MCUs. It shows you don't have much experience with this stuff.
If you had any experience "with this stuff", you'd know 16mbit of QSPI flash (compatible with rp2040) costs 7-8 cents in volume. 64mbits 12cents or less. And would calm your tits. It is okay.
> Besides how it looks like you weren't one of the early adopters
If you had any experience "with this stuff" you'd know better than to buy reels of mcus on rev1/rev2 that haven't been on the market for atleast a year or two.
> bottlenecked by a core without FPU
Why would lack of FPU impact bandwidth?
Lack of FPU is non-issue with fixed point math in most cases.
> I have read the docs, and like I said the point of STM32 is ubiquity
And yet during chip shortages, rp2040 were one of the few MCUs without stock issues or crazy prices... in fact, I've never seen it out of stock. STM32 on the other hand... ouch. Fun times!
>This is what I'm talking about, like honestly what capability does that unlock for you beside party tricks?
So every capability and use-case that doesn't tickle your zoomer sensibilities is a party trick?
They also have a pick and place machine.[1] It's a lot like the defunct Liteplacer.[2]
It seems to be a kit, not a pre-assembled unit. It's hard to tell from the documentation. It looks a bit flimsy for the rigidity required. Same problem as the Liteplacer. To download the "white paper", you have to go through the onboarding funnel and agree to being spammed, which is always annoying.
The frustrating thing about prototyping pick and place and solder paste machines is that production people want speed, which costs. The prototype-only market isn't big enough. (Has the low-cost reflow oven situation improved? The low-end ones had hot spots that would scorch a board.)
Compare this Neoden line of products.[3] No idea if these are any good. US$3000 for pick and place. That looks like a much more useful product than the Opulo machine. It can work with a wider range of part sizes; not everything has to be on an 8mm tape.
(The problem with plated-through holes, of which "vias" are a subset, is that they require a number of chemical baths which aren't worth setting up for a one-off.)
Cool concept but as someone that makes quite a few PCBs a year I don't see any use of this for me personally.
Once you get to a certain component size and layer count, home making PCBs doesn't make any more sense.
I do still order only PCB and solder stencil initially to hand solder and test boards before PCBA but by that time I have tested most on breadboards and fitted the PCB in CAD to wherever it will go.
While waiting the 1-2 weeks for the boards and components I usually work on the firmware.
On that note, my last PCBway order took four weeks to arrive. Dunno if it was a random fluke, but it sure came with more border regulations incantations attached to the box than usual.
Just had to quickly find replacement for all NXP stuff we were using on a prototype board already sent to assembly. Good that we aren't using their MCU, only some discretes. And good that we git a proper B2B contact so it was polite warning rather than being ghosted like PCBway did to some hobbyists out there.
It's a shame there aren't US manufacturers who can manufacture custom PCBs as cheaply as JLPCB or PCBWay.
These types of lasers might be a stopgap if tariffs make buying from those companies inordinately expensive, however the extreme cost, and the need to do a bunch of cleanup kind of makes me suspect there needs to be another iteration of this tech.
Right, but OSH Park competes on quality not price. In fact the other day I came across a reddit post from the owner of OSH Park explaining that e.g. JLC is selling their finished products below his material cost. Add on to that the subsidized shipping and of course they're going to be well below what any US based company can offer.
They don't really compete on quality even. Quality is high in some ways. Their soldermask is tougher. But for instance alignment between drill/copper/mask/outline accuracy is no better. And all the chinese fully route the board outline, you have no cleanup to do. oshpark leaves panel tabs at random places all around the board that you have to grind down yourself. A big deal if the pcb is a special shape to fit into something else. I have one that is under 1/2" square with a funky dog bone or T shape. Not only do they allow it, they route the whole outline. idk how they can even hold onto the board physically to do it.
oshpark puts panelization tabs right in the middle of a row of castellated edge contacts.
And they often take longer to ship to me in NJ than Elecrow, a shop that's even cheaper than jlc or pcbway, without even using DHL, just the cheapest shipping.
Never mind the lack of features. I have a board that needs 1.2mm pcb. Well on oshpark I guess I can make 0.8mm work. 3d print a filler plate or something. But what I really need is 1.2, and all the chinese shops have it, not even special extra cost, or maybe barely.
I got a PCB from JLPCB and I was shocked at the quality. I even put a little silkscreen graphic of a silly cartoon on my PCB, and it was amazingly detailed in the final print.
I’ve had good results with jlcpcb and I push their manufacturing limits a little bit now and then to get the miniaturization I need. 0402, 5mills, tight vias, small BGA no bad boards yet (n~1000). Tried pcba too, worked, but a small sample size. Even in HASL they work and their stencils are dead-on.
And $2.10 plus shipping for 5 boards, $7.50 for ten (4layer FR4, HASL, small boards) is crazily subsidized for prototyping. It’s like free prototyping boards. Even 6 layer and flex boards are cheap. They also have crazy cheap CNC and 3DP, but I haven’t tried that yet.
Also the integration of the free design tools (easyEDA pro , DFM review, etc) is unbelievably efficient with one-click to order parts or boards lol
I have had a great customer experience so far, but I do suspect they are either subsidized or use a lot of loss leaders to pull people into the ecosystem.
Other companies may offer better quality, but I’m fine with Toyota, I don’t need Rolls Royce for what I’m doing.
That post is 7 years old and JLC has changed a lot since then. It would be interesting to hear his current impressions (presumably they're still doing competitive comparisons).
This was my issue too. Maybe pricing has changed, but 2 years ago it was $150 to get 10 small boards made at OSH Park vs $20 to get them from JLCPCB. I was on a tight budget, so getting them from China was a no-brainer.
The general population of the Western world has no idea, or even a reflexive reaction to deny, the fact that Chinese companies in “strategic” industries are intentionally subsidized to the point that their competitors look ridiculously expensive in comparison.
Its not just the subsidies. JLPCB is literally physically connected to LCSC electronics. This makes their margins for pick and place add-ons really good. And most of their sales are loss-leaders.
Even without subsidies this company would have structural competitive advantages over US PCB manufacturers. Its silly to think a US PCB manufacturer would be competitive in the same way without having something like the digikey warehouse and associated manufacturing chains right next door.
The industry is strategic. jlc and all those others exist because China has decided it wants them to exist, and did things to see to it that they exist.
There are 1000's of corn farmers in the US, because the US has decided it was strategic and sees to it that there is always a lot of corn production capacity, even if it means buying the corn itself or artificially disposing it in some other way like making a law to use ethanol.
I don't see how the time matters. The original comment wondered what makes JLC strategic when there are 1000's of them.
The point was that JLC are not strategic because they are unique. The cause & effect goes the other way. JLC are not unique because their industry was strategic.
Is this really unique to China? I thought that the problem was that prices become more arbitrary and subjective than representative of cost of labor, with inter-continental trades.
... wait, does this also explain apparent advantages in software as well as disadvantages in hardware that the US has?
CircuitHub founder here. Most fab by order volume is in the US, but for now, at least, we do have to source some fab from overseas for various reasons.
I don't really get this. If I'm doing vias, I'm nearly finished with prototyping. Not to mention routing is a part of that and I don't want to route twice.
I think it's a neat idea that could be useful sometimes, and which I will probably never actually use.
I like that it allows you to prototype using the same smt parts that you will want in the end, without having to try to buy redundant DIP and THT copies of every part, or build a bunch of dip breakout boards for everything.
That's potentially a pretty big deal.
The reasons why I'll probably never use it are:
* It's value requires that it's not merely possible but totally convenient for you to print and etch.
Chemical etching with a sponge seems like it should be no problem but how to print? I don't have a laser engraver and I wouldn't use a router for this even if I had one. I do have an fdm printer. Has anyone one used fdm to print etching mask onto copper? I have a laser printer, is there some kind of special sheet that you run through a laser printer and then transfer like with an iron or something? I see a few almost possibilities but I just don't see it being actually convenient to where I would actually do it more than once just for the experience.
But if somehow you had this down, then great. This is just swapping out a plain blank copper pcb for a more useful one. It's a win.
* I bet I almost never have a design that fits within or around the pre-allocated number of vias and the pre-allocated positions of them.
Most of my things need a at least one 28 to 40 pin header somewhere, or 2. Even if I use surface mount versions that solder just to the top, that's still a lot of signals that usually can't all live just on top, they have to cross each other and that means more than a dozen vias. If I made my own version with more vias, they would probably just be in the way. Here he does try to make clusers of vias so there are both vias and clear spots. Maybe there is a way to just keep working on that idea and develop other layouts with more vias that still leaves clear areas.
* All my stuff, the circuit itself is usually pretty simple and doesn't need much prototyping. The initial lash-up to get the circuit working at all, is usually not where I spend all my time.
I might have a lot of traces but it's all just data & address lines without much mystery about if it will work or how it will work.
I go through a lot of revisions but prototyping wouldn't have changed that, I just like refining the design over time because it's easy to do in the cad software. It's (apparently) a passtime I enjoy. Most of the design is actually in the exact board shape fitting into something else, and fitting everything into a small space while still being hand-solderable with only medium skill/tools, ie tsop & qfn but no bga, all 0805, etc, so it can be built by more people instead of just myself or an actual fab shop.
I think for most of my stuff, this just wouldn't get me a faster development cycle. The initial lash-up to get the circuit working at all is just not where I spend most of my time, and I think that's what this primarily helps with.
Or, it helps make a better final version if you don't really care too much what size & shape the board is, any old square is fine, but for some reason you do care about having 20 vias instead of 20 bits of wire?
But I don't think everyone else is me. I mean this guy sure seems to think it's solving a problem for him.
QFN packages would not benefit much from this (you cannot make much more than a basic breakout board, whose same purpose is better fulfilled with one of those SMD adapters from aliexpress)
And regarding high-speed digital buses... are we being genuine here? Just the fact that you cannot have meaningful design over ground return paths with this thing makes any moderately fast digital link unfeasible. Best you'll be able to manage is regular speed SPI (which also does not need a board like this), you can forget about RGMII, ULPI, LVDS, MIPI, SLVS-EC, or anything else for that matter.
The post I replied to said "If I'm doing vias, I'm nearly finished with prototyping". You're not if you're using a QFN switcher which needs heat dissipation via the center pad. There's lots of cases of prototyping where vias would be handy.
> you cannot make much more than a basic breakout board
Except, you know, all the supporting circuitry, connectors, maybe microcontroller and JTAG header which could be put on instead of bodged together with random wires -- exactly the problem this is targeted to solve.
> Just the fact that you cannot have meaningful design over ground return paths with this thing makes any moderately fast digital link unfeasible.
You can with a 4-layer version, which is brought up in the video as one of the obvious improvements to make/try, and you would need/want the vias at least to route the other signals around your high-speed traces.
with modern Chinese manufacturing, you get 2-layer PCB with via and soldermask gorgeously made for $4 in 24 hours (actually samples can even be free in China). why bother make PCB at home with all the nasty chemicals or CNC ?
1. It's a hobby in your own right. The nasty is not that bad, back in the day the annoying thing was how fiddly it was but the community thought of better ways like etching with a sponge. You can get better boards made online but that applies to all hobbies.
2. In most of US/EU you get them for $5 in up to _two weeks_, or in two days for $5+$2X or more which adds up quicklyand can be more than the rest of the project. Even next day shipping loses out badly to making it yourself in ~30 minutes, turns into two days delay unless you're lucky to have an idea in the morning and time to work on it in the next afternoon, a lot of the time i see people bodging things i'd make another board for because it's just easier.
It might take 24 hours to make the board but shipping is at least another week of wait time. The dream is for a 3d printer like setup that sits on the desk and cranks out fully assembled multilayer boards
I tried the laser etched PCB with the same laser and the same settings, I could not get it to etch through the copper. No clue why. Always impressed with the Opulo guys, but wish it was reproducible.
I tried with the same laser and settings as well, and couldn't get it to work either.
I think the issue is that if there's a tarnish on the copper, it will work okay. The problem is when you polish the copper. It turns reflective and will not absorb the energy of the laser.
A 5W UV laser or a 100W MOPA laser will give better results. I'm thinking about a 200W version for black friday.
Is there a way you could do this with a lot of vias in a grid to make it more flexible and either lasering around the vias in a tight circle to disconnect them or just straight up punching them out?
Ahhhh. Another one. I'm convinced there is not a single acronym/technical short word I pronounce [in my head] the same way as other people. C'est la Via.
If not Canadian, then I'd guess American with electronics influence from someone (Commonwealthian) who'd always say 'vee', EEVBlog say.
(Fwiw route can be correctly pronounced differently in different circumstances: BrE is 'follow that [root] to the woodshop and [rowt] a nice profile on this piece'.)
Cool that people are trying new things. And I sure hate waiting for a PCB order to make its way from Hong Kong or Taiwan to Nebraska.
I'm not sure I want the trade-off of having to try to fit my existing circuit into those pre-populated vias.
Part of the joy of PCB layout is trying to be "optimal". That might be optimal in board size, optimal in the elegance of the trace layouts. I even trying to minimize vias (or not have them altogether). With prefab vias, there will be kludges to work my own vias into those locations. And, honestly, the unused vias will annoy me as well.
I'm a sucker for solder masks, silkscreening… I think I am too in love with what I get back from Hong Kong and Taiwan.
My "quick prototyping" consists of breadboarding and trashy perf-board mockups.
I would definitely use this to knock together quick prototypes before ordering boards from China.
So many times that I’d happily pay $20 to try a board right fricking now (and I doubt they’ll be $20 all-in).
For me, it would replace breadboarding, not replace a final prototype PCB before committing to a first assembly run.
> I'm a sucker for solder masks, silkscreening…
The author of the video has some previous work on solder masks and silk layers. You may want to check the earlier laser manufacturing videos.
That fitting problem sounds like an excellent job for a computer program! I wonder how many prebuilt PCB layouts would be necessary to fit most hobbyist requests.
So glad to see a Stephen Hawes video make the front page. I've been trying for a few years now to get discussion going around his opensource pick and place the LumenPNP[0]
His goal of bringing small scale manufacturing down to the workshop / home garage level is really inspiring and is especially relevant in the modern era of tariffs and economic upheaval.
To get good at something people need to get hands on experience and it needs to be affordable and relatively easy to use. The kinds of tools that Stephen is promoting make that possible and that's critical if we want people to get good at building things.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LumenPnP
I find his videos very interesting. And I'm always a proponent of open systems and processes.
I will say that his presentation style always tilts me a bit. It's his laugh/excitement always seems forced/fake.
And crash zooms in on his face/mouth/nostrils.
I was keeping up with them for a while, putting up with it/skipping bits (why am I a goblin or ghoul? What does that mean?) but had lapsed and forgotten about it until this submission.
I completely agree. I can't handle watching his videos for long, for similar reasons.
However besides the personal dislike, I think its worthwhile to stop giving so much merit based on advertising "open source" or "effort" or "presentation" etc, because frankly many of these YouTube "makers" and the "maker community" are misguiding a lot of people to make bad designs and waste time and resources. People ought to value correctness and quality a bit more, lest our things become even more enshittified than they are now. One would think that hobbies would be a refuge from disposable low quality shit... yet we get RPi Pico et al (which are arguably getting less shitty but still laughable compared to actually good MCU products) and the people who claim to "out do the big corp" by using a Raspberry Pi with an SDR dongle and saying they achieved $50000 of capability with $60 in parts..
Case in point, the Opulo PNP systems are significantly overpriced and have amateurish mechanical as well as circuit design that are worse than cheaper systems like Pandaplacer in terms of reliability and performance.
Explain how RP Pico (rp2040) is "low quality shit "compared to "actually good MCU products" (which are those supposed to be?)
I agree that Opulo PNPs are overpriced though, but I'm sure people getting these are aware that it's just a bunch of 20x20 aluminium profiles, 3d printer mgn rails, basic DC pump, etc and parts-wise there's nothing to justify the price, but they get them anyway because of entusiastic community engagement and support aspects - most importantly - in English. And it probably works just fine for the small scale projects they are used in.
I'm referring to their collective effort in MCUs, including RP2040 and RP2350. There are a bunch of issues that are now addressed but permanently makes me distrustful of them especially when combined with how uninteresting the hardware are
- Broken ADC design on RP2040 with nonlinearity at certain codes (and they're not fixing it)
- Shipping chips with exact part number of inductor and specific DCDC layout requirement (like come on, the Chinese are advertising zero decoupling capacitor required and you can route the USB right under the chip in funky shapes and everything "just works".. meanwhile RPi is doing this)
- GPIO current leakage (fixed with a stepping but I would hate to be those who bought a reel of the earlier stepping)
"Actually good MCU products" in my opinion are those with at least a reason to exist. For example the ubiquity of STM32, the radios of ESP32, the high compute of i.MX RT1172, the cheapness of PY32 et al, the low power of Ambiq chips, the reliability of Atmel/Microchip, the USB3 on CH569, the potential true MCU-level-SoC-capability on AG32, etc. When compared with these, RP chips are frankly not innovative at all (PIO does not unlock much actual capabilities besides party tricks). Combined with the general culture of people hyping RPi Pico chips, it results in a culture of ignorance and hype.
Erratas alone aren't a big deal, but the fact that they're happening with such basic things and for no innovation is not a good sign. We shouldn't give RPi a pass just because "it's the good old RPi that we know"
So the faulty ADC (nonlinearity issues) of RP2040 is the only thing you can list and that makes it "low quality shit"?
I implore you to open up the errata sheet of stm32g4, just the ADC section alone (or frankly any stm32 mcu) (https://blog.mjbots.com/2023/07/24/stm32g4-adc-performance-p...), and that's an MCU series with focus on analog peripherals.
Stm32 chips are plagued with all sorts of issues and hardware bugs that are very easy to run into. In comparison rp2040 has surprisingly few major defects apart from its ADC implementation.
I see no mention of exact part number of inductor requirement in their hardware design guide, are you making shit up now? They are somewhat more particular in oscillator selection, and unfortunately don't include factory trimmed RC oscillator like most MCUs do these days.
> PIO does not unlock much actual capabilities besides party tricks
Ok, so you've no idea what you're talking about.
RP2040 is widely used in many projects because it has insane bandwidth for MCU in its price category. It can do 4 x 32bit reads/writes per cycle (if those ops are spread across 64kb x 4 memory banks), at 200mhz base clock, which gives theoretical maximum of 3.2 gigabytes per second bandwidth. That is pretty crazy.
This enables you to interface with or easily emulate many highspeed interfaces. And do things like 24ch 400mhz logic analyzers and similar. And this is what they are commonly used for (emulating memory cards, etc)
And that's a 60cent MCU. In this price range MCUs don't have 264kb of SRAM and 133/200mhz much less with two cores, that can push anywhere remotely this insane amount of bandwidth.
rp2040 additionally has human friendly and readable documentation, with truckloads of examples, and API that's pleasant to use. (can't exactly be said about stm32 ref manuals and APIs).
While it is not perfect (rp2040 ADC, and lacks encryption), some of those shortcomings have already been addressed in rp2350, with double sram (520KB at this price point!), floating point, even more PIO, more improved DMA channels and so on.
While cheap py32, gd32, apm32, etc are cool, but they just generic arm32 m0/m4. A 10 cent 24mhz m0 puya with 3kbs sram, isn't particularly impressive when put next to 60cent rp2040 with 80x sram, etc
> Combined with the general culture of people hyping RPi Pico chips, it results in a culture of ignorance and hype.
You haven't opend an errata sheet of stm32 chips even once and you talk about ignorance.
rp2040/rp2350 are unironically one of the best MCUs on the market (esp. in their niche), both in documentation/API and price/perf and features/flexibility in doing highspeed interfaces/bandwidth.
I have read the docs, and like I said the point of STM32 is ubiquity. It's not a great design in other respects but it was once ahead of the envelope and that made it ubiquitous which made it king for longevity. There is no room for another "king" on that throne. Especially counting all the clones of STM32, it is basically a forever design.
Comparing a 60 cent chip to a 10 cent chip is itself crazy work. That's like a whole three stratums apart in terms of capability. Dammingly, you are forgetting about the cost of the external flash that it requires, when program flash is the main cost of MCUs. It shows you don't have much experience with this stuff.
> I see no mention of exact part number of inductor requirement in their hardware design guide, are you making shit up now?
LMFAO go read the literal datasheet page 455 https://datasheets.raspberrypi.com/rp2350/rp2350-datasheet.p...
They literally had to "work with Abracon to create a custom 2.0×1.6mm 3.3μH polarity marked inductor" like wtf
Besides how it looks like you weren't one of the early adopters (since RPi shipped one abracon inductor with every one RP2350 for a bit), you also clearly haven't designed a board with the chip in question.
> theoretical maximum of 3.2 gigabytes per second bandwidth. That is pretty crazy.
This is what I'm talking about, like honestly what capability does that unlock for you beside party tricks? Can you name anything meaningful beside "logic analyzer" and "some memory card?" Even disregarding that, what can you do with such thruput if you are bottled by USB 1 speeds and a core without FPU? It doesn't come close to being able to do interesting things like LVDS ADCs or actual high speed memory interfaces because of the bit width requirement, yet people will go into a frothing frenzy should you dare insinuate that RPi Pico might be kinda useless
> rp2040/rp2350 are unironically one of the best MCUs on the market (esp. in their niche), both in documentation/API and price/perf and features/flexibility in doing highspeed interfaces/bandwidth.
As you might surmise, I disagree. Go make some actual projects instead of "reading the docs" all day (though I must admit I do the same). Also, it sure looks like our definition of high speed differs by a wide margin
> Dammingly, you are forgetting about the cost of the external flash that it requires, when program flash is the main cost of MCUs. It shows you don't have much experience with this stuff.
If you had any experience "with this stuff", you'd know 16mbit of QSPI flash (compatible with rp2040) costs 7-8 cents in volume. 64mbits 12cents or less. And would calm your tits. It is okay.
> Besides how it looks like you weren't one of the early adopters
If you had any experience "with this stuff" you'd know better than to buy reels of mcus on rev1/rev2 that haven't been on the market for atleast a year or two.
> bottlenecked by a core without FPU
Why would lack of FPU impact bandwidth? Lack of FPU is non-issue with fixed point math in most cases.
> I have read the docs, and like I said the point of STM32 is ubiquity
And yet during chip shortages, rp2040 were one of the few MCUs without stock issues or crazy prices... in fact, I've never seen it out of stock. STM32 on the other hand... ouch. Fun times!
>This is what I'm talking about, like honestly what capability does that unlock for you beside party tricks?
So every capability and use-case that doesn't tickle your zoomer sensibilities is a party trick?
Okay.
They also have a pick and place machine.[1] It's a lot like the defunct Liteplacer.[2]
It seems to be a kit, not a pre-assembled unit. It's hard to tell from the documentation. It looks a bit flimsy for the rigidity required. Same problem as the Liteplacer. To download the "white paper", you have to go through the onboarding funnel and agree to being spammed, which is always annoying.
The frustrating thing about prototyping pick and place and solder paste machines is that production people want speed, which costs. The prototype-only market isn't big enough. (Has the low-cost reflow oven situation improved? The low-end ones had hot spots that would scorch a board.)
Compare this Neoden line of products.[3] No idea if these are any good. US$3000 for pick and place. That looks like a much more useful product than the Opulo machine. It can work with a wider range of part sizes; not everything has to be on an 8mm tape.
(The problem with plated-through holes, of which "vias" are a subset, is that they require a number of chemical baths which aren't worth setting up for a one-off.)
[1] https://www.opulo.io/products/lumenpnp
[2] https://www.liteplacer.com/
[3] https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/SMT-PCB-Production-Li...
Cool concept but as someone that makes quite a few PCBs a year I don't see any use of this for me personally.
Once you get to a certain component size and layer count, home making PCBs doesn't make any more sense.
I do still order only PCB and solder stencil initially to hand solder and test boards before PCBA but by that time I have tested most on breadboards and fitted the PCB in CAD to wherever it will go.
While waiting the 1-2 weeks for the boards and components I usually work on the firmware.
Once the Chinese close the border and the domestic fabs raise their prices it will be very useful.
Have you tried getting something tabbed domestically? I was just given a quote of $20k for ten boards about the size of a phone.
The other domestic fab I tried dicked me around for three weeks before I got a quote. $5k this time.
PCBway wants $500
On that note, my last PCBway order took four weeks to arrive. Dunno if it was a random fluke, but it sure came with more border regulations incantations attached to the box than usual.
Just had to quickly find replacement for all NXP stuff we were using on a prototype board already sent to assembly. Good that we aren't using their MCU, only some discretes. And good that we git a proper B2B contact so it was polite warning rather than being ghosted like PCBway did to some hobbyists out there.
Switzerland has a free trade agreement with China so that is highly unlikely to happen even with US and EU pressure.
https://toolong.link/v?w=A_IUIyyqw0M&l=en
It's a shame there aren't US manufacturers who can manufacture custom PCBs as cheaply as JLPCB or PCBWay.
These types of lasers might be a stopgap if tariffs make buying from those companies inordinately expensive, however the extreme cost, and the need to do a bunch of cleanup kind of makes me suspect there needs to be another iteration of this tech.
OSHpark and sunstone are pretty good. circuithub is serviceable for turnkey assembly (though they might outsource fab overseas, uncertain).
Right, but OSH Park competes on quality not price. In fact the other day I came across a reddit post from the owner of OSH Park explaining that e.g. JLC is selling their finished products below his material cost. Add on to that the subsidized shipping and of course they're going to be well below what any US based company can offer.
https://old.reddit.com/r/PrintedCircuitBoard/comments/9bt5ed...
They don't really compete on quality even. Quality is high in some ways. Their soldermask is tougher. But for instance alignment between drill/copper/mask/outline accuracy is no better. And all the chinese fully route the board outline, you have no cleanup to do. oshpark leaves panel tabs at random places all around the board that you have to grind down yourself. A big deal if the pcb is a special shape to fit into something else. I have one that is under 1/2" square with a funky dog bone or T shape. Not only do they allow it, they route the whole outline. idk how they can even hold onto the board physically to do it.
oshpark puts panelization tabs right in the middle of a row of castellated edge contacts.
And they often take longer to ship to me in NJ than Elecrow, a shop that's even cheaper than jlc or pcbway, without even using DHL, just the cheapest shipping.
Never mind the lack of features. I have a board that needs 1.2mm pcb. Well on oshpark I guess I can make 0.8mm work. 3d print a filler plate or something. But what I really need is 1.2, and all the chinese shops have it, not even special extra cost, or maybe barely.
15 years ago oshpark was great.
I got a PCB from JLPCB and I was shocked at the quality. I even put a little silkscreen graphic of a silly cartoon on my PCB, and it was amazingly detailed in the final print.
I’ve had good results with jlcpcb and I push their manufacturing limits a little bit now and then to get the miniaturization I need. 0402, 5mills, tight vias, small BGA no bad boards yet (n~1000). Tried pcba too, worked, but a small sample size. Even in HASL they work and their stencils are dead-on.
And $2.10 plus shipping for 5 boards, $7.50 for ten (4layer FR4, HASL, small boards) is crazily subsidized for prototyping. It’s like free prototyping boards. Even 6 layer and flex boards are cheap. They also have crazy cheap CNC and 3DP, but I haven’t tried that yet.
Also the integration of the free design tools (easyEDA pro , DFM review, etc) is unbelievably efficient with one-click to order parts or boards lol
I have had a great customer experience so far, but I do suspect they are either subsidized or use a lot of loss leaders to pull people into the ecosystem.
Other companies may offer better quality, but I’m fine with Toyota, I don’t need Rolls Royce for what I’m doing.
That post is 7 years old and JLC has changed a lot since then. It would be interesting to hear his current impressions (presumably they're still doing competitive comparisons).
This was my issue too. Maybe pricing has changed, but 2 years ago it was $150 to get 10 small boards made at OSH Park vs $20 to get them from JLCPCB. I was on a tight budget, so getting them from China was a no-brainer.
The general population of the Western world has no idea, or even a reflexive reaction to deny, the fact that Chinese companies in “strategic” industries are intentionally subsidized to the point that their competitors look ridiculously expensive in comparison.
Its not just the subsidies. JLPCB is literally physically connected to LCSC electronics. This makes their margins for pick and place add-ons really good. And most of their sales are loss-leaders.
Even without subsidies this company would have structural competitive advantages over US PCB manufacturers. Its silly to think a US PCB manufacturer would be competitive in the same way without having something like the digikey warehouse and associated manufacturing chains right next door.
There are 100.000’s pcb fabs in China, why would JlC be strategic?!
The industry is strategic. jlc and all those others exist because China has decided it wants them to exist, and did things to see to it that they exist.
There are 1000's of corn farmers in the US, because the US has decided it was strategic and sees to it that there is always a lot of corn production capacity, even if it means buying the corn itself or artificially disposing it in some other way like making a law to use ethanol.
Facts. But this has been the case for almost 70 years.
I don't see how the time matters. The original comment wondered what makes JLC strategic when there are 1000's of them.
The point was that JLC are not strategic because they are unique. The cause & effect goes the other way. JLC are not unique because their industry was strategic.
Is this really unique to China? I thought that the problem was that prices become more arbitrary and subjective than representative of cost of labor, with inter-continental trades.
... wait, does this also explain apparent advantages in software as well as disadvantages in hardware that the US has?
CircuitHub founder here. Most fab by order volume is in the US, but for now, at least, we do have to source some fab from overseas for various reasons.
Without assembly, I'm not sure how I'd use OshPark for practical purposes. We need a non-China vertically-integrated setup.
I've had problems with Sunstone since they got bought by a company in the Midwest. It may just be corporate integration pains, but still.
Specifically we had issues with added graphics not in my GERBERS, and some through hole plating issues.
Yeah that's fair. I don't use them very often. They're in a similar bin as Advanced in that regard.
In the 90’s we ordered them from TX
I don't really get this. If I'm doing vias, I'm nearly finished with prototyping. Not to mention routing is a part of that and I don't want to route twice.
I think it's a neat idea that could be useful sometimes, and which I will probably never actually use.
I like that it allows you to prototype using the same smt parts that you will want in the end, without having to try to buy redundant DIP and THT copies of every part, or build a bunch of dip breakout boards for everything.
That's potentially a pretty big deal.
The reasons why I'll probably never use it are:
* It's value requires that it's not merely possible but totally convenient for you to print and etch.
Chemical etching with a sponge seems like it should be no problem but how to print? I don't have a laser engraver and I wouldn't use a router for this even if I had one. I do have an fdm printer. Has anyone one used fdm to print etching mask onto copper? I have a laser printer, is there some kind of special sheet that you run through a laser printer and then transfer like with an iron or something? I see a few almost possibilities but I just don't see it being actually convenient to where I would actually do it more than once just for the experience.
But if somehow you had this down, then great. This is just swapping out a plain blank copper pcb for a more useful one. It's a win.
* I bet I almost never have a design that fits within or around the pre-allocated number of vias and the pre-allocated positions of them.
Most of my things need a at least one 28 to 40 pin header somewhere, or 2. Even if I use surface mount versions that solder just to the top, that's still a lot of signals that usually can't all live just on top, they have to cross each other and that means more than a dozen vias. If I made my own version with more vias, they would probably just be in the way. Here he does try to make clusers of vias so there are both vias and clear spots. Maybe there is a way to just keep working on that idea and develop other layouts with more vias that still leaves clear areas.
* All my stuff, the circuit itself is usually pretty simple and doesn't need much prototyping. The initial lash-up to get the circuit working at all, is usually not where I spend all my time.
I might have a lot of traces but it's all just data & address lines without much mystery about if it will work or how it will work.
I go through a lot of revisions but prototyping wouldn't have changed that, I just like refining the design over time because it's easy to do in the cad software. It's (apparently) a passtime I enjoy. Most of the design is actually in the exact board shape fitting into something else, and fitting everything into a small space while still being hand-solderable with only medium skill/tools, ie tsop & qfn but no bga, all 0805, etc, so it can be built by more people instead of just myself or an actual fab shop.
I think for most of my stuff, this just wouldn't get me a faster development cycle. The initial lash-up to get the circuit working at all is just not where I spend most of my time, and I think that's what this primarily helps with.
Or, it helps make a better final version if you don't really care too much what size & shape the board is, any old square is fine, but for some reason you do care about having 20 vias instead of 20 bits of wire?
But I don't think everyone else is me. I mean this guy sure seems to think it's solving a problem for him.
I guess you've never used QFN packages nor high-speed digital buses.
Also you don't have to reroute, you can build it the same.
QFN packages would not benefit much from this (you cannot make much more than a basic breakout board, whose same purpose is better fulfilled with one of those SMD adapters from aliexpress)
And regarding high-speed digital buses... are we being genuine here? Just the fact that you cannot have meaningful design over ground return paths with this thing makes any moderately fast digital link unfeasible. Best you'll be able to manage is regular speed SPI (which also does not need a board like this), you can forget about RGMII, ULPI, LVDS, MIPI, SLVS-EC, or anything else for that matter.
this
For those who don't know: Vias are not only used to get an electrical connection from one side of the PCB to another.
You also need them to keep radiation in check and often to move heat away.
With this technique, good luck getting through EMC testing for anything but trivial circuits.
> You also need them to keep radiation in check and often to move heat away.
Hence my post saying vias are useful at all stages of prototyping.
> good luck getting through EMC testing for anything but trivial circuits
It's for prototyping! Nobody says you can't add more in a board spin.
The post I replied to said "If I'm doing vias, I'm nearly finished with prototyping". You're not if you're using a QFN switcher which needs heat dissipation via the center pad. There's lots of cases of prototyping where vias would be handy.
> you cannot make much more than a basic breakout board
Except, you know, all the supporting circuitry, connectors, maybe microcontroller and JTAG header which could be put on instead of bodged together with random wires -- exactly the problem this is targeted to solve.
> Just the fact that you cannot have meaningful design over ground return paths with this thing makes any moderately fast digital link unfeasible.
You can with a 4-layer version, which is brought up in the video as one of the obvious improvements to make/try, and you would need/want the vias at least to route the other signals around your high-speed traces.
with modern Chinese manufacturing, you get 2-layer PCB with via and soldermask gorgeously made for $4 in 24 hours (actually samples can even be free in China). why bother make PCB at home with all the nasty chemicals or CNC ?
1. It's a hobby in your own right. The nasty is not that bad, back in the day the annoying thing was how fiddly it was but the community thought of better ways like etching with a sponge. You can get better boards made online but that applies to all hobbies.
2. In most of US/EU you get them for $5 in up to _two weeks_, or in two days for $5+$2X or more which adds up quicklyand can be more than the rest of the project. Even next day shipping loses out badly to making it yourself in ~30 minutes, turns into two days delay unless you're lucky to have an idea in the morning and time to work on it in the next afternoon, a lot of the time i see people bodging things i'd make another board for because it's just easier.
It might take 24 hours to make the board but shipping is at least another week of wait time. The dream is for a 3d printer like setup that sits on the desk and cranks out fully assembled multilayer boards
I tried the laser etched PCB with the same laser and the same settings, I could not get it to etch through the copper. No clue why. Always impressed with the Opulo guys, but wish it was reproducible.
I tried with the same laser and settings as well, and couldn't get it to work either.
I think the issue is that if there's a tarnish on the copper, it will work okay. The problem is when you polish the copper. It turns reflective and will not absorb the energy of the laser.
A 5W UV laser or a 100W MOPA laser will give better results. I'm thinking about a 200W version for black friday.
Burning off black spray paint for etch resist worked for me. An extra step but easy enough
ok, please make a example. I need zx spectrum or commodore or macintosh
show me how You can to do this.
Is there a way you could do this with a lot of vias in a grid to make it more flexible and either lasering around the vias in a tight circle to disconnect them or just straight up punching them out?
Ahhhh. Another one. I'm convinced there is not a single acronym/technical short word I pronounce [in my head] the same way as other people. C'est la Via.
I say "I went vi-ya this route."
Yet I do say vee-ya for the holes in pcbs. So I say the same word both ways at different times.
And I guess I say route both ways at different times too now that I mention it.
If not Canadian, then I'd guess American with electronics influence from someone (Commonwealthian) who'd always say 'vee', EEVBlog say.
(Fwiw route can be correctly pronounced differently in different circumstances: BrE is 'follow that [root] to the woodshop and [rowt] a nice profile on this piece'.)
... how were you pronouncing PCB?
You jest, but given this trend, I should have been expecting Pick-Buh or something!
It took Brian_K_White's reply before I figured you were talking about "via" and not "PCB" :)
(because you put "acronym" before "/short word")
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