[RTTY] TinyFSK

[Kok Chen]

Peter,

You might consider using something like Eagle to whip up a simple two sided board.   For something this small and simple, you can use the free version of Eagle (both Mac and Windows versions available; that is why I chose Eagle).

https://www.autodesk.com/products/eagle/overview

Then get someone like OSH Park to fabricate it.  

OSH Park for example charges $5 per square inch for a double-sided plated-thru-hole board, and you get three copies, so 5 or 6 bucks each postpaid USA, and probably ends up cheaper than buying a perf board to kludge one, especially if you find two other suckers to join you :-).  

For that price, it comes with solder masks and silkscreens on top and bottom layers (if you ask Eagle to create them).

https://oshpark.com

From there (after you debug it, naturally :-), you can "publish" the board at OSH Park, and anyone else can also order a set of three boards of the same design for $5 per square inch.   

Here is an example of a board that I made public (auto GPSDO reference switch for the HPSDR Hermes):

https://oshpark.com/profiles/w7ay

(The result is here http://www.w7ay.net/site/Hardware/HermesReferenceOscillator/Contents/Board%20Image.html)

It takes about two weeks to get the boards back.

What OSH Park does is to combine your design into a large 1m by 1m board (I think that is the size) and sends it off to PCB fabrication when the board is filled.  When it comes back, they crack the individual small boards and mail it to you through USPS First class mail.

An original template is the expensive part, so OSH Park gets three identical large boards made each time.

A few years ago, it used to take them a week to get enough orders to fill a board.  Their business must be picking up since my experience from a couple of months ago is the latency has dropped to two or three days.

After the large board is filled, it spends a week to 10 days to be fabricated somewhere in the mid-west (I think where Motorola used to do their business).  As far as I know, they do not off-shore the fabrication.

At $5 a square inch, it is quite expensive for larger boards, so OSHPark is not ideal for those.  But for small boards like Arduino shields and mikroBUS boards, they are ideal for the fast turn around.

Even if you have not used Eagle before, it is worth learning.  Hardware projects (especially SMD stuff) will never be the same again!  And if you are like me, you end up buying Eagle to do larger boards.  If memory serves, even the free one will allow copper pours.

I would have done something like this if I use (or encourage the use of) FSK. HI HI. 

73
Chen, W7AY