Hello,
I'm recently rediscovering my old passion of electronics (and thanks to sites like EEVBlog)
In the past (1990s) I had just played with electronics with breadboards and non-soldering (Dick Smith Funway 1 & 2 - I still have the books) I really wanted to move from breadboarding to something more permanent and while I could just use prototype board (one with just pads) I found it can get a little messy.
So for the first time I went down the 'design a pcb' path. You can read about it in more detail
here on my blog if you want. Rather than going all complex, I just kept it simple with a known circuit - I think of it as my 'Hello world' to creating pcbs.
After about 3 weeks I received my first ever self-designed PCB board from OSHPark. And I'm excited!!! (I feel like Dave with one his mailbag blogs).
The final product:
I'm actually quite pleased from the result - I haven't soldered the components in yet (that will be the final test that I've done everything all ok) and I'm sure many experts on here will point out mistakes on my layout. Please go easy - It's my first one.
I highly encourage new beginners to give it a go and design your own pcb board - move from a prototype board to a pcb board - it is actually quite fun, the learning slope is a little high, but the rewards are awesome - (and I'm getting such an awesome buzz right now - if it wasn't for Christmas shopping that I have to do right now I'll be soldering this thing!!).
Cheers,
Phil.
(Philbywhizz)