Today marks a big milestone for Ilanga: we ordered our first PCB! This may not sound like much, but for us it was quite stressful: once a board is made, it is extremely hard to change, if not impossible, if any mistake was made. We did several reviews of the board to make sure nothing was wrong, both in the schematic and on the layout. We needed to think about manufacturing: since we will use a reflow oven to assemble the board, it meant we had to place most of the components on one side of the board and to cleanly design where the solder should go.
We also prepared the bill of material and ordered enough of everything to prepare two complete assemblies in case something goes wrong. To save some costs and risks we will do our first tests without the battery, which will be added once we are sure everything works as intended!
Come back next week to see how the assembly session went!