Very nice.

It's always cool to get your first board back from a board house.

Hehe. Arragement.

Based on the other post, it looks like he had this made by Futurelec, so options for things like masking the vias is pretty limited if not non-existant.

Futurelec is a non-option for me, since their minimum 10mil trace/space rule means every chip with a popular 0.5mm lead spacing is unworkable.

It also seems pretty expensive. I just priced a single DS 10cm x 10cm board and was quoted $71 USD. 10 would be $161 USD. For $100.00 USD you can get 1000 square cm of DS with solder mask and silkscreen at Gold Phoenix and 7mil trace/spacing, shipped.

Originally Posted by jakeselectronics

A bit more research in the production stage couldn't have hurt, but I was too eager.
That will teach me.

I found it to be difficult without someone else doing a very detailed audit of your schematic/board layout to get everything perfect the first time. Invariably you'll have some minor issues. I labeled GND and 3.3V on one of my boards incorrectly, and spaced some header pins badly on another.

Maybe ill try Gold Phoenix next time.
Thanks for the tip.

GP was just an example. There have been discussions here of boardhouses and prices. Unfortunately most are centered around NA and shipping to NA.

Nice layout. Looks very professional.

Originally Posted by jakeselectronics

Can I see some of your PCB's?

And how about this one. you may have heard about them. They are in canada. They are just going into public PCB production.
What do you think of their prices?
dipmicro electronics - PCB

I've seen the dipmicro one and I was thinking about it. I did the quote thing and I don't remember what it came out to, but it still seemed a little expensive. They just started with this so I'll wait for someone's reviews.

I'm sure I've posted these before, but these are SAM7 development boards I had made up. I etch my own boards and I don't sell anything, so I don't have much of a call for a boardhouse, but the ARM7 chips are just too complex around the chip with the seperate core power and PLL and all the decoupling caps to make anything home etched all that pretty.

Nice boards...

Did you solder the components or get it assembled?

How much was it for 1? (i think you said you got 1...)

Those boards were done by BatchPCB because I just wanted individuals. BatchPCB uses Gold Phoenix for their manufacturing. I got three boards in total, all different designs for $46 shipped to Canada. One board is not shown.

I populated the boards myself. Regular soldering iron.

I'm going to be doing some boards for my RF project here and I'll want a few of them, so I'll likely be going directly to GP for that.

arr ok. Nice soldering job with the IC.

RF boards ey....
Im interested in getting some RF modules and want to learn about them.

Ill be interested to see your design.

Jake.

I've been trying out the TI CC2500 and the Microchip PICTail PLUS modules, but I'm working now with the RFM12B. Google 'jeelabs' and he's doing very similar to what I'm doing except I'm using MSP430's. I'll have remotes and nodes for data collecting and remote operation. It'll be working off a fairly simple P2P network that I'm just adding some complexity too. Trying to get the power requirements as low as possible for nodes that need it.