A bit tangential, and in the topic of nostalgia for old ways, remember when every block had a photo shop? Couldn’t we get a “PCB shop” in our bright near future? I wonder if the density of enthusiasts that need PCBs made is so low that the entire market is captured by only one or two companies based off China subject to the realities of shipping times.
I learned PCB design, 3D printing and C just to listen to music
11–20 of 56 posts
Re: I learned PCB design, 3D printing and C just to listen to music
#12> I was able build an out-of-band protocol extension into my audio player app I wonder how that works.
Easier than it sounds: the app runs a simple http server that serves cover art by track id. The track id is transferred via iOS's built in "Now Playing" metadata fields, which is then used by the device to construct a query and fetch the full resolution image.
Re: I learned PCB design, 3D printing and C just to listen to music
#13A bit tangential, and in the topic of nostalgia for old ways, remember when every block had a photo shop? Couldn’t we get a “PCB shop” in our bright near future? I wonder if the density of enthusiasts that need PCBs made is so low that the entire market is captured by only one or two companies based off China subject to the realities of shipping times.
> I wonder if the density of enthusiasts that need PCBs made is so low that the entire market is captured by only one or two companies based off China
The sad answer is that yes, it is that low.
The better answer is that as PCB manufacturing gets more hands-off, we can look forward to some "PCB totem" somewhere in your city, like those self-service photo printers that exist now.
Re: I learned PCB design, 3D printing and C just to listen to music
#14A bit tangential, and in the topic of nostalgia for old ways, remember when every block had a photo shop? Couldn’t we get a “PCB shop” in our bright near future? I wonder if the density of enthusiasts that need PCBs made is so low that the entire market is captured by only one or two companies based off China subject to the realities of shipping times.
JCLPCB and who? Having a board made and assembled was both great in speed and effort, and terrible in cost markup when you add tarrifs on a $50 uc at 5 board minimum.
Re: I learned PCB design, 3D printing and C just to listen to music
#15Oh, Absent Friends by Divine Comedy. What a beautiful record!
Re: I learned PCB design, 3D printing and C just to listen to music
#16How did you learn PCB design? Any books or resources you can recommend? How long did it take you to learn?
Re: I learned PCB design, 3D printing and C just to listen to music
#17How did you learn PCB design? Any books or resources you can recommend? How long did it take you to learn?
Mostly YouTube and udemy courses. This one was pretty good in particular: https://www.udemy.com/course/high-speed-pcb-design-with-kica...
I've spend around a month on the PCB as a hobby, next to a full time job.
Re: I learned PCB design, 3D printing and C just to listen to music
#18Did you configure pipewire to allow multiple samplerates, so it can auto-switch the dac and not have to resample?
Re: I learned PCB design, 3D printing and C just to listen to music
#19Did you configure pipewire to allow multiple samplerates, so it can auto-switch the dac and not have to resample?
I am not using pipewire, just ALSA. AirPlay is (almost) always 44,100 Hz so there is not much to auto-switch to.
Re: I learned PCB design, 3D printing and C just to listen to music
#20> I never did this before so there was plenty to learn, from basic electronics and magnetics to high-speed signal routing.
How did you learn this?
As a hobbyist I found hardware to be quite impenetrable, given the hard mathematics and physics requirements. My attempts to learn this essentially degenerate to taking an informal engineering course. It quickly becomes clear that I'm years away from making something, and I eventually run out of both free time and executive function. AI's been helping... But I don't have the ability to tell when the output is wrong.