I plan on designing a PCB, mainly made of SMD components, small enough to fit in a rugged enclosure dedicated to heavy machinery electronics. I started a thread about that here. I think such an enclosure is really valuable to the design method : instead of drawing a PCB that fits all the electronics you want and then wondering how to enclose it, the reasoning is reversed. The enclosure and its connector are “imposed”, and the objective is now to fit all the needed electronics in it, even if it means reconsidering what is “needed”. Thanks to all the work done by people up to now, we have a pretty clear idea of the combination of components required to make it work, so we can focus on how to enclose and connect them.
I think keeping small modules that are easy to source, plugged in the main PCB (like the nano, ADS1115, MMA…) is still a good idea, as it allows people to swap them if required (if fried for example). But I’m not sure about that, and if I we keep pre-built breakout modules, where should we stop ? MMA, BNO, nano, Cytron, simpleRTK2B, ESP32 are all often used as breakout modules and could potentially be incorporated to the main PCB. More compacity and less solderless contacts, but increased complexity to design, less modularity, and harder to repair…
I don’t want to rush the design, which is why I asked people first what they thought was nice to have on the PCB through a poll. The objective is to be able to implement different combinations of options (like USB vs Ethernet vs Wifi, Arduino vs ESP32, single vs dual antenna, maybe even F9P vs PX1122R). I already had 22 answers to this poll and I will make the results public soon. I don’t want too rush this development to make it as good and useful as possible on first try (electronics hobbying can become quite expensive).
Back to your question : I think going towards SMD boards is a good idea for people who already experimented AOG on a first machine, understand the system as a whole and want to have now a more compact, reliable and professional looking design. I think it will be harder for new people to debug and understand suff if they don’t first manipulate the electronics.
On the other hand, if the circuits are well explained somewhere in an online documentation, and if the PCBs are easy enough to order already soldered, it could help popularize AOG a lot. Farmers who wouldn’t be as motivated as we are in prototyping electronics may choose to give it a try, while with a hand soldered PCB and too much wires may repel them (to caricature). To make this strategy viable, the system should be thoroughly documented to make sure people can get an electronic setup ready to go in little time and effort. I’m sure a lot would be interested if the electronics could be summed up as 1) order a PCB, 2) order components, 3) have everything soldered by a company, 4) run wires through the cabin, 5) crimp these wires to a big connector and 6) mount a support for a W10 tablet. Maybe that’s just a sweet dream, but that’s how I picture the popularization of AOG.
Companies like jlcpcb and pcbway can nowdays manufacture and solder SMD all at once. I never tried it, and don’t know the exact procedure, but it could be a nice way to go. This could simplify the process described above even more by merging 1), 2) and 3) together.
Is there other people who thought about SMD PCBs ? @doppelgrau, you designed one with Etherned embedded and a lot of other cool stuff. Do you have a feedback to share about it ?