Part 1 : Finally ordered my first PCB online!

I’ve been fiddling with electronics for quite some time now (decades?), and I’ve always been making things. One thing I never did was order PCBs tho, and I resolved that problem yesterday!

In the past, making PCBs for me was pretty much ‘Get a perf board, hook stuff together and call it done’. I never got to the point where I wanted to have a finished product from it. Although, I had plans for making a Arduino Nano-based AVRISP to program my USB-less microcontrollers or these with USB but that my PC is too capricious to deal with. I even have a semi-permanent breadboard that I use for that.

But now, I have resolved the problem. No more of that messy breadboard! Therefor, I present: The NanoICSP by ETek-Lab!

I’m not 100% sure if the power selection jumper will actually be helpful (I never had to program a MCU that was not using 5V), but I added it in case. Also, not sure if while programming at lower voltages, if the MOSI/MISO/SCK/RST pins needs to be capped as well. I guess that’s gonna be an experimentation for some time this year? Might result in a little ‘oupsie’ moment but who knows?

The idea is to have the NanoICSP screwed in next to a short breadboard that has been glued on a piece of 3D printed support, so I can have my 6 wires going directly to where they’re needed and everything is dealt with on the PCB. I’ll do an update once I receive the boards and have at least one assembled.

Nonetheless, I ordered from PCBWay and, I have to admit, what was rather a big stress initially, turned out to be easier than I expected. Yay!? Definitely going to be making more boards in the future now that I know how to do it, and that I seen how easy it is to order these!

To be continued…