Printers.

When I finished a very DIY toner-transfer friendly circuit board layout, I hit the print button. Beeeeep, Magenta cartridge empty. I took it out to give it a shake, in a futile attempt to dislodge the last few toner particles. Ordered a refilled/refurbished cartridge, but life intervened and I took too long to discover that it wasn't. Purchasing another cartridge wouldn't fit in the budget, so this project went on hold. A incident with a neighbor's well, stoked the urgency of getting this done, but what to do?

Again, Hack-A-Day comes to the rescue! OSH Park is mentioned favorably. Their standard price is based on the dimensions of the board. Hold-on, they can make vias. Those will save some space! Time to re-design. The original layout came in at a bit over 4 square inches (55x55 mm). The updated board shaved an entire square inch, and now measures 43x48mm. That's quite a discount and will fit in my budget better than yet another toner cartridge.

A few days later, the boards are in my unstained by ferric chloride hands, and they look great! Assembling the first board took a little longer than I might have expected. Seems that my SMD hand soldering skills were a bit rusty. The closest thing to a flaw in the layout was my footprint for the HC-05, it was off by a small amount. Not by enough, at the moment, to bother adjusting.

Powering up the assembled board was unexciting, nothing exploded, smoked, beeped or even blinked. Let's load the code!