The Global Printed Circuit Board Market (infographic)

In 2020, the Printed Circuit Board (PCB) market size was valued at around $60 billion and was projected to grow at a CAGR of more than 3% from 2021-2027.

Component miniaturization has sped off the market growth for miniaturized, lightweight, and high-performing PCBs in electronics like smart wearables, healthcare equipment, and other portable gadgets. Various Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) are venturing into customized circuit board designs to improve miniaturization and obtain sleek shapes. The trend has further influenced the growth of three-dimensional printing to create compact PCBs by mounting parts on the inner layers.

PCB Layout Designing: Top 8 Tips on How to Design a PCB Layout for Beginners!

PCB Designing is a crucial step in a PCB Assembly Process. The printed circuit board is the project's final step, and we use it to validate a PCB prototype.

Any electronic enthusiast should have the ability to design PCB layouts if he is a pupil, an expert in the business, or a hobbyist. The construction of a proper PCB layout is an integral part of every PCB manufacturer. In this article, we'll show you the top 8 PCB Layout Design Tips for Total Beginners.

Volume and media control buttons with Raspberry Pi Pico

A while ago I used STM32 bluepill board to emulate a consumer control device that would allow me to control volume and media playing on PC, over USB. Implementation wasn't very easy, since I had to modify an existing library to add support for consumer control HID class. Nevertheless, I succeeded and the details and my library can be found in this post.

Meanwhile, a new cheap development board appeared. It is the Raspberry Pi Pico which has native USB port. I thought this could be used as well to emulate a keyboard, mouse or consumer control HID. This board can be programmed in C/C++ or MicroPython. Since I wasn't willing to install the C/C++ development kit, I attempted to use MicroPython. Unfortunately, it lacks required modules for USB HID and rotary encoder. Then I found about CircuitPython, which is based on MicroPython and is supported by Adafruit. At its current version, it is bundled with rotary encoder module and, for USB HID, you can use Adafruit HID library.

Media control device built on breadboard

Alternative firmware for XTW100 Programmer

I have bought the XTW100 Mini Programmer and while attempting to read the firmware of the STM32 MCU using an ST-Link programmer, somehow I erased the flash and got a totally useless piece of hardware. XTW100 is advertised as a better replacement for the CH341A based programmers and after tracing the schematic I failed to find any reasons why it should be better. The information I gathered can be found here.

With the original firmware, the programmer should be able to interface SPI and I2C EEPROMs and flash memory chips. However, since I have no way of getting that back to test whether the programmer works or not, I found there is an open-source firmware available. Unfortunatety, it does not come with I2C support.

Self-signed certificates for MQTT server

During the last series of posts, I set up an Orange Pi single board computer running Armbian and I installed Mosquitto on it. My intention is to have a self-hosted MQTT broker for IoT applications. I already have it running with the configuration from previous post and it can be used for local connections in my home LAN and WiFi. Since this is a closed network, behind a firewall running on the Internet gateway I got from my ISP, there is no need for MQTT over SSL. But I need more: I want to be able to connect to MQTT server from remote devices (my Android phone, for example).

To do this, I need to configure a secured listener in Mosquitto and open its port for internet access. Since most ISPs offer dynamic IPs to residential clients, I also need a dynamic DNS service provider to have a domain name which always points to my IP. If you can get a static IP, then you don't need this.

Configure Mosquitto™ MQTT broker on Armbian

In the previous post I installed Armbian on an Orange Pi Zero single board computer (SBC). I intend to use this device for IoT and home automation, therefore I wanted to have a running MQTT server (broker). I prefer a self-hosted broker instead of a remote one hosted at a 3rd party company. In this way I have full control and I am sure sensitive data stays in the home network. Nevertheless, current SBC devices have enough processing capabilities and are energy efficient.

In this post I will configure the broker software. I want the server to listen for unencrypted connections on a port available for local clients only. It should also listen for encrypted connections on ports that I will open for remote access. There are two kinds of TLS connections: PSK (pre-shared key) and SSL certificate. The certificate will be self-signed and generated with OpenSSL (in a follow-up post).