After viewing a number of tutorials about creating a bare bones Arduino Uno I though I’d order the parts and give it a go. After mocking up the arduino using a simple breadboard layout I thought I’d see if it was feasible to turn the breadboard into a fully printed circuit board.
After a bit more research I found a piece of software called Fritzing which can be used to layout a PCB design ready for manufacture. The result of the design I created is below.
It took a bit of time and i went a bit over board from the bard bones arduino adding in voltage regulators so it could be powered from anything from 5v – 9v and also added in voltage regulators so i could get 3v out pins as well. I also decided to create pin outs for all the pins which was a bit overkill. After finishing the design Fritzing gave me the option to export as a Gerber File. Not something I’d heard of but it basically exports all the layers required for manufacture of the board, ie copper layers, solder layers, silk screen printing ect…
After a bit more research I found a company in China offering amazing deals on PCB manufacturing called JLCPCB. You upload the files and can view exactly what its going to look like. I sent the design off and also created another PCB design at the same time to save on delivery costs. The other PCB I was going to use for mounting different types of Arduinos, and ESP8266 boards. The results back from China were way better than I expected. I also got 10 of each as that was the minimum order.
After getting the PCB boards back I mounted all the components onto them and everything worked, almost first time. I had to add an extra capacitor to the board near the reset button which wasn’t on the designs. But not a mistake on my part more a bit of added safety.
Finally I sliced and diced the other board I had produced into the smaller mounting boards I am going to use should I need to put something like an ESP01 onto a PCB. Below is a simple board I made in order to easily program the ESP01 as it doesn’t mount into a standard breadboard.
