Comment by badlogic
9 months ago
This surely could be recreated with off-the-shelf components, no question. It would be a bit of a challenge to stuff another breakout board into the available space, but certainly doable.
But there's a reason for doing the custom board. As my projects get smaller in size, I need to get away from breakout boards. This project was a good fit to come up with sub circuits for different tasks that I can just copy and paste onto a new design, say for a little gaming handheld, or a micro RC car with a much thinner/smaller form factor.
What might be overkill for the current project might be the enabler for the next project. And it let's me iteratively learn new skills.
That said, I might do another version of this with off the shelf parts only for easier reproducibility.
> This surely could be recreated with off-the-shelf components, no question.
I would love to know how does one go about doing this with off-the-shelf components. Can you share more, please
Replace any custom PCB with off the shelf breakout boards. Redesign the enclosure so the breakout boards can be mounted. Instead of a custom motherboard PCB, solder wires between the pins of each breakout board, sprinkling through hole resistors and capacitors around where needed.
Since I didn't go down that route, I don't jave any recommendations for breakout boards that could do the job. I'm also not sure if the assembly is any easier than the assembly of my design.