Lately, I’ve been investigating how to get some real PCBs manufactured for my projects. My PCB is an adapter board to fit between two pre-made modules. It’s 2-layer, plated through hole.

It’s a design for a wireless gateway/hub.

I went and got a few formal quotes from PCB manufacturers.
They’re all around £130 for a single 12in x 9in panel.
I can pay closer to £100 if I order from abroad, but then I’ll likely have to pay import duty on top.

It’s not really 12in x 9in as you need a margin around the edge and a gap between PCBs of at least 0.1in.

Here’s my current PCB:

It’s 1.7in x 2.4in  = 4.08 sq in
That’s a best case of 26 PCBs per panel, coming out at £5 per PCB.
If I tesselate with appropriate gaps, I can get 20 on a panel for a real cost of £6.50 per PCB.

That cost is much too high for my project.

And, not to forget, that doesn’t include any sensor PCBs…
At the ratio of 1:2 for hubs:sensors that I wanted to get made, I’ll be getting maybe 6 or 7 hubs for £130, which I can’t stomach…

So, back to the drawing board!
It’s not as sexy (or easy to fit in a box), but it’s much smaller. (I haven’t routed the tracks yet, so it might end up a little bigger).
Looking down, the Ciseco module faces you with the antenna poking you in the eye.
The blue board sits on top of the ethernet board, mating with the square pads on the right.
The power jack is mounted on the underside of the blue board along with the serial header and LED.

This PCB is 0.9in x 1in = 0.9 sq in
Best case of 109 PCBs per panel, coming out at £1.20 per PCB.
Even if the reality is only half that yield, I’d be a lot happier.

It’s a bit fugly, but they’re just prototypes…

The Ciseco XRF is a CC1110F32 module with the same form factor as the XBee. It’s cheaper than an XBee and is completely reprogrammable.

But, the XRF doesn’t feature a standard connector for programming. So, here’s a single sided programming/test jig users can etch at home (or you can buy something similar).

There’s a single LED on P2_3, a serial port on P0_2/P0_3 and nothing else.

I’m making the project files available as I’ve created a custom Eagle CAD footprint for the XRF with the CC1110F32 pins labelled.

Here are the Eagle files.

(Note, looking down on the board, pin 1 on the programming header is on the bottom right)