Getting a PCB

A central part in each sensor build is the PCB (printed circuit board). The difficult part with that is the “printed” – a PCB is a professionally manufactured piece of equipment that’s hard to build yourself. Here are your options:

• Order the PCB using the prepared design files from a manufacturer. Depending on where, at which quality and how many boards you order, this will cost a little to a lot of money.
• Find somebody who has ordered your selected PCB already and still has duplicates in stock. Ask around in the community.
• Build the PCB in a DIY fashion. Since the PCB uses vias and through-hole components, this is going to be hard, but if you’re properly equipped and have done this before, or are not afraid of repeated failure, this might be for you.
• Don’t use a PCB at all. You can still build a compatible sensor by soldering together the components using wires. Beware that we don’t provide instructions for this though.

PCB Design Parameters

When choosing your manufacturer, make sure that the following design choices are supported. Each manufacturer usually provides a list of restrictions that must not be broken. Our designs use:

• TODO: Via size, minimum trace width, milling path restrictions

Gerber files

TODO: Where are they?