A Small Update#

Today was a bit of a split day. Most of the morning was spent on a customer project, mainly software and web design, but I did manage to make a little progress on the weather station board.

I’ve now sent off the next revision of the PCB for manufacture after making a handful of small tweaks. I’m under no illusion that it’s perfect — there will almost certainly be something wrong — but that’s part of the process. Getting a physical board in hand forces you to confront the real-world issues that don’t always show up on screen.

Coming from a software background, this is still something I’m adjusting to. The idea of “fail fast” exists in hardware, but it operates on a very different timescale. Instead of minutes or hours, you’re often dealing with days or even weeks between iterations, which requires a bit more patience and a bit more confidence before committing to a design.

It does make me wonder whether we’ll eventually see a shift similar to what happened with 3D printing — an accessible, relatively clean way to manufacture PCBs at home. If that ever becomes viable at a reasonable cost, it could fundamentally change how quickly hardware can be developed and iterated on.

For this revision, I’ve sent the board off to PCBWay, and with a bit of luck I should have the boards back by the end of next week.

PCB

Weather Station PCB as of 2026-03-26

In terms of changes, this is a very minor revision. I adjusted the 3.3V rail slightly, moved a few silkscreen labels to improve clarity, and reduced the overall board size so that it fits within the constraints of PCBWay’s prototyping service.

I’ve also started looking into UK-based PCB prototyping services. If I can shorten the design–test–build cycle, even by a few days, it would make a noticeable difference to how quickly I can iterate on these designs.

If there’s one thing I’m learning, it’s that hardware rewards thinking ahead far more than software ever forces you to.

If you are working on custom carrier boards, sensor integration, or ESP32 prototypes and need an experienced engineering partner, let’s discuss your project at Protoworks (NI).