Author: Philip

San Francisco, Agusan del Sur CARAGA Region, Philippines

A sneak peek at PCBway manufacturer – from ordering to sample

PCBway landing page

I have decided to try a different PCB manufacturer that offers competitive pricing – PCBway. First, let us look at the site’s landing page. Right off the bat, we can see the instant quote widget and the latest offering on flexible PCBs. Before we check their more advanced PCB offerings let’s look at the basic PCB fabrication and also check into how competitive is their pricing, how fast the shipping is, and most importantly, how good their PCBs are. We have already seen the landing screen now let us register get our sample PCBs! Click on Join Free and fill in the form below – just make sure your email is correct.

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Seeedstudio Fusion Vs Elecrow Vs JLCPCB

I have been building these small projects for quite some time now and used many PCB building services. Professionally made PCBs brings in a lot of advantages; the one I like most is that I don’t have to get rid of the etching solution after – oh, I have to mention the silkscreen and solder mask finish that you won’t get from DIY PCBs. The professionally built PCBs generally performs better than DIY PCBs. I have used these services in the past – let’s look at them in detail and see which service you should apply for your next project. The first part that we should look at is the order screen and the options they offer. Most DIY projects would only go two layers, but for those who need complicated layer stack up and shielding, JLCPCB offer up to 8 layers while Elecrow and Seeedstudio offer up to 6 layers. In terms of material, Seeedstudio has the most offering having FR4, Aluminum, and Flexible Boards while JLCPCB only has FR4, and Elecrow didn’t state, so I would assume FR4?…

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A DDS function generator using an ATmega16

I still remember the piece of a rectangular box with many buttons labeled 1kHz, 10kHz, 100kHz, 1MHz, and everything else in between. Oh, it also has a knob connected to a dial dividing a sector into a hundred parts with a series of 7 segments changing dial every time a button is fired– just like old school radio we see at StarTrek. We commonly call it the function generator, and it’s usually used to inject square waves into your circuits – what for? Mostly for clocking. Here’s a new implementation of the AVR DDS function generator 2.0 (scienceprog.com); it has a different board layout and uses only through-hole components for easy construction. It has two outputs, one for a +-5V signal source and the other for a 0-10V signal source; the voltage levels of the two outputs are reconfigurable using two separate potentiometers. Like the original version, it incorporates a 2×16 LCD screen and pushes buttons for control – press a button to start and stop the signal generation. The circuit’s DAC is just a simple R-2R ladder controlled by…

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