So you prototyped your grand design using Arduino and some peripherals and shields you bought online. Everything’s debugged and works. Customers are lined up. Now what? Should you continue to wire together Arduinos, external boards, sensors, etc.? Or should you invest in a Printed Circuit Board (PCB) that ties it all together.
It’s not a simple decision. Hopefully this post can help you sort things out.
The “pro’s” of a fully integrated PCB version are
- You control the size of the device and all its other characteristics like power supply, layout, etc.
- Fully customized to exactly what you need: no extra parts to pay for.
- You control the supply: you don’t need to depend on boards that may be unavailable in a year.
- Quality control is completely up to you. Buy the highest quality parts or the cheapest crap you can find: whatever you need.
But like everything, there are negatives. Here are some of the “con’s”
- You need to manage inventory yourself, so you’ll have to buy parts whenever you need a new batch of product.
- The manufacturing is all up to you. Solder the boards yourself or find a Contract Manufacturer.
- Your costs will likely be higher, because most Arduino peripheral manufacturer have economies of scale on their side (they make more boards) and in Shenzen, their supply chain can provide less expensive parts.
- You have to deal with components being obsolete or hard to find.
It’s not a simple decision to make on its own. At volumes over 100/year it can start to make sense. Or if you need something in a size and form factor that doesn’t exist off the shelf, then building it yourself is a great alternative. My gut feeling, however, is that for most people, buying off the shelf hardware makes the most sense. Also, if you’re reading this, it’s a fair bet that designing and building electronic hardware isn’t your core competency so it may be bet to leave that up to someone who does it for a living. This gives you the option of having them deal with the problems of manufacturing hardware while you can focus on your application of the hardware.
If you'd like to subscribe to this blog, please click here.