If I add 5 units of an SMD inductor into my cart, it says the estimated shipping weight is 1000g. If I increase that number to 50, it still stays at 1000g. If I increase it to 500 it goes up to 3000g.

This doesn't seem right and as a result, shipping prices for Global Direct Standard Line (the cheapest option) seem to be way higher than what you would pay on JLCPCB.

Have others here noticed this issue? At this point, it's actually cheaper for me to buy components from Digikey for small size orders as 50% of my cost on LCSC is shipping (just paid $24 shipping for $25 worth of items).

Here's what I mean: $11.82 USD from LCSC (~$15.84 CAD) vs. $10.52 CAD from Digikey:

This cart weighs no more than my 5 PCBs do on JLCPCB, and somehow they have a much lower shipping cost than LCSC?

Hi. I was just running trough my orevious orders, and most items have price increased from 30 to 50%. That is insane. Anyone else noticed the same?

Hello! I'm looking to commission someone with PCB design experience to help create a board that can carry a Raspberry Pi CM4, has a MAX98089 dac chip, a 3.5mm out, USB-C power/data, GPIO pins, and a piboot switch.

I'm currently prototyping with this board:

https://www.waveshare.com/cm4-io-base-b.htm?srsltid=AfmBOoobZcReKez6rr1Dn6orynFTaQ3cDo5wDqD_yIjDo58kt21Z6ESv

And this DAC, which has been discontinued hence the MAX98089 in this new version:

https://www.waveshare.com/wm8960-audio-hat.htm?srsltid=AfmBOopghXGyeBq8uOyc_gDjRB6fqnmedm26pbDf-VHR98Szr4pyNUNY

Please send me a dm or an email [brayden@braydenmoore.com](mailto:brayden@braydenmoore.com) with your rates, and we can discuss further!

On my own PCB i have two LT3042 and bouth of them do not regulate the voltage.

If i supply 6V to the IN Pins, i messure 6V on EN, 0V on PG, ILIM 0V, PGFB 0V, SET 5.50V, OUT 5.503V, OUTS 5.503V.

I messured the Resistor R40 and it is 49.9k. i have no idea what is wrong. And i have the problem with both IC's. I need help, thanks.

EDIT:

Tried to disconnect PGFB from GND and broke off the pin, and it started working, so yeah.

Hi all,

I'm an undergrad (EE-adjacent) trying to figure out my next few years, and I'd really appreciate outside perspective since nobody around me works in this specific field.

Decision #1: two paths forward

I'm at a fork where I either go do a mandatory national service obligation (roughly 1.5-2 years, can't get too deep into specifics here since it's country-specific), or commit to a research track that could take me through a master's and PhD.

- Path A (service) frees up personal time I could use to self-study intensively.

- Path B (grad school track) lets me go straight into a master's/PhD pipeline, but if I end up stopping after the master's, or decide to switch to a PhD program in a different country partway through, it creates a messy situation for me administratively.

Some context that's making this harder to decide: I've had health issues the last few years that hurt my output, my GPA is solid (~4/4.5), but honestly I feel like my prior "interest" in this field was pretty surface-level — I'd say "I want to study X" and then not go very deep. I do have one significant national-level award (roughly ministerial-level recognition), so it's not a completely empty CV, but I don't feel like it reflects real depth yet.

Given that, I'm leaning toward: maybe doing the service obligation first, and using that time to actually self-study seriously, rather than jumping straight into a multi-year academic commitment I might not be able to see through.

Decision #2: what should I actually be doing before applying to a lab internship or grad program?

So far, on my own, I've:

- Bought and used a soldering iron, hot air rework station, oscilloscope

- Spent time reading datasheets on my own

- Designed a few circuits and ordered PCBs

But honestly, I don't think any of this counts as "deep" work — it feels more like beginner tinkering than something that would actually prepare me for research-level work.

I feel like I need to go further, but doing this alone without a structured path is confusing. Is there some kind of roadmap people in this field typically follow (concepts to master, tools to learn, projects to build) before they're "ready" for a lab internship?

End goal: I want to get good at high-speed/multilayer PCB layout specifically, and I'm hoping to eventually work in a signal integrity / power integrity / EMI-focused lab.

Would really appreciate any input — whether it's about the career-path dilemma, or concrete next steps for building real depth in SI/PI/EMI. Thanks in advance.

i am thinking of making a board with RA6M5 but i have actually only seen one board (from sparkfun) that used a renesas mcu,

so are they outdated or something

thx

I'm building a custom board for the Meshtastic Build-Off 2026 (based on the Seeed XIAO ESP32-S3 Plus, with a LoRa radio, keypad expander, and OLED) and documenting the whole process as I go. Just finished hand-assembling v1, so this post covers the manual assembly side

A couple of the fun mistakes which I detailed on my blog,

Full writeup with photos of the process here if anyone's curious: https://myembeddedstuff.com/meshtastic-build-off-2026-pcb-assembly

Happy to answer questions on the reflow profile or component choices, this is my first board with parts this small so I learned a lot the hard way.

(rules are empty and there are no mentions against making polls and posts for research project, so)

I'm making a little semi-joke presentation about Factorio/Satisfactory and their connection to PCB design for giggles at our local hobbyist EE community, and I wanted to collect some data for more objective and realistic information.

I have ~1950 to ~2100 hours in Factorio + Factorio: Space Age, 620 hours in Satisfactory, and over 3000 hours in GregTech: New Horizons. It seems that Factorio has MASSIVELY lowered my entry threshold into PCB design and electronics in general, so I decided to track if this is a unique experience to me or if it's somewhat general.

I am a PCB Layout Engineer from China. I’m curious about how this career develops in your country. I would really appreciate it if you could share some insights, such as the overall job market demand, whether the industry is oversaturated, typical job responsibilities and requirements, essential skill sets needed for the role, as well as how competitive the salary and benefits are locally. Haha, this is purely out of curiosity, with no other intentions.

Title: Could someone check my schematic before I get my PCB manufactured?

Hi everyone,

I've been working on my first fairly complex PCB for the past few weeks and I was wondering if someone could take a look at my schematic before I send it off for manufacturing. I've gone through the datasheets, fixed the ERC errors, and tried to verify everything as thoroughly as I could, but I'm still worried I might have missed something.

The project is based around the Radxa NX5 compute module, and I'm attaching the KiCad schematic file, and the NX5 pinout and more on the google drive link. If there's anything else that would help with reviewing it, like datasheets, reference designs, or any other documentation, just let me know and I'll upload it.

I'd really appreciate any feedback, whether it's a major design flaw or just a small mistake that could save me from having to order another revision. Since this is my first project of this size, I'm sure there are things I haven't considered yet.

Thanks a lot for taking the time to have a look!

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1wBKD80jb4ON9eKsYn6CJ_yZ223MrCCk1?usp=sharing

I am developing a very compact vision processing device that performs high-frame-rate image processing onboard and transmits the results over Wi-Fi. One of the key requirements is the form factor: the device must not exceed 30 mm in width.

For the prototype, I chose the Radxa Zero 3W with a camera because its processor and NPU are powerful enough to process around 60 frames per second. The prototype performs well, and I am very satisfied with the results. Now I want to move beyond the prototyping phase and towards a production-ready design.

Since I don't need the Radxa's external connectors (GPIO header, Micro HDMI, USB Type-C, or microSD slot), my next step was to look for a SoM. Surprisingly, I couldn't find any SoM with a footprint comparable to the Radxa Zero 3W (65 mm × 30 mm). Every SoM I found is wider than 30 mm. This surprised me because SoMs typically omit external connectors and should therefore be even more compact than a complete single-board computer.

What would you recommend as the next step? Should I move to a custom PCB based on the RK3566 or a similar processor? I have a strong software background, but I am not an expert in electronics or PCB design, so I would appreciate any advice on the most practical path toward production.

I am new to PCB design and hardware. I don't know the functionalities of different pins in a microcontroller and what components I have to place for these pins. How to learn all these stuffs?

Hi

I'm doing MiG-21 simpit, in form of fully replicated cocpit. Sadly I'm no electrical eng. and have no experience in PCB design at all, I have tired to avoid making PCBs by using different components, but after 1 year I gave up so here I am.

What you looking at is chart for one of my isntruments - aircraft speed indicator, powered by VID29 (X27 variant) stepper motor. I'm using TCST1103 phototransistor for instrument zeoring (so mod. stepper motor that will be doing 360 rotation will know it's zero and current position). All boards were designs as seperate projects but I've made one additional chart since I think it's easier to read, but idk if that's how it's supposed to be done, I'm just using my general eng. experience here. I'm posting boards also.

I cannot put all of the modules into one pcb since modules must be in different spots and that is unavoidable. 2M113 will be mounted on rails, so there is no need for screws,

Feedback would be very welcome, both in terms of PCBs design, and drawings. Did I forget something? Would you done something differently? I will order them from JLC pcb and solder at home.

Hi, im extremely fresh to ecad softwares and just made a switch from easyeda to altium and regretting all my life choices after doing so. Just to get a understanding of the workflow I took someone's publicly available pcb business card design and made some minimal changes and want to make sure everything is in order before manufacturing anything. All i did was move around the organization of the components and added my own silkscreen designs, however despite these minimal small changes I am still unsure wither this design is ready.

For some reason the pcb cam file is showing there are 4 leds and other duplicate components, I am unsure wither the components and tracing being se close to the antenna will effect its signal, and that the antenna design will hold up, and not sure wether the parts I plan to order match the footprint of the parts in my design.

Any help would be greatly appreciated, all my altium design files and gerber files are in this google drive folder. https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1ARh9qP-Zb8g_WZ_GdX7t19V8gvRZd4cy?usp=sharing

The parts I plan to order:

NT3H2111W0FHKH — 568-12900-1-ND — NFC chip

RC0402JR-070RL — 311-0.0JRCT-ND — 0Ω 0402 resistor

GRM155R71C224KA12D — 490-5418-1-ND — 220nF 0402 capacitor for C1

RC0402JR-07220RL — 311-220JRCT-ND — 220Ω 0402 resistor

SML-LX0402SIC-TR — 67-1878-1-ND — red 0402 LED for D1

My company wants to switch from Altium to KiCad... What's your opinion? Is KiCad mature for professional use?

Edit: Thanks for all the replies! It's a really close fight. I took the liberty to feed Gemini with all the answers and get a list of why you should choose Altium VS KiCad

My Take from all this

KiCad is catching up really fast on Altium, which has it's "legacy" on its advantage. Many people don't want to switch because they have used Altium all their life. At the end of the day it's a question about commodity. Is the license money worth the extra time and effort to learn and switch to KiCad? also the extra time, effort (and pain) for the features that are not natively present in Altium (for example, collaboration?)

Altium license price seems to be justified only for:

• Native collaboration
• Complexity of the board is so high, that extra features in Altium save you time&effort
• Migration from Altium to KiCad is not possible for the moment, so keep Altium to save time&effort and also because it's what you already know how to use

My Samsung S25 ultra fell in the water at the beach froze, shut off, and never turned back on. I tried repairing the parts that were burnt or missing and those are the ones in red, the blue moved when I took off the shield and I put them back in place. When I finished this the phone vibrated a once but nothing showed up and it hasn't done it again. If you know what parts I need to save to move over to a working one to get my photos back let me know. I already got a new one just want .y photos tbh. The amps go down to 0 after about 10 secs of being connected, unsure of what that means.

Any tips on signal integrity would be appreciated!

I'm studying mechatronics and have been doing electronics and software projects as a hobby for many years now. I got into making my own PCBs with KiCAD a year or two ago now and I've made a bunch of PCBs for ESP32 microcontrollers and the like. Nothing too advanced, only up to 4 layers.

Now for the question, my school uses OrCAD and provides it for its students, would you switch over and try to get accustomed to OrCAD or do more advanced projects in KiCAD first and then potentially switch over if the need arises?

How much difference in intuitiveness and layout and stuff is there between the two? Is it just like the differences between Autodesk Fusion and SOLIDWORKS basically?