I finally found a use for the Raspberry Pi 5 I accidentally ordered a few months ago.
I'm working on a project that involves monitoring and controlling some temperatures to pretty tight tolerances of ~1/10th of a degree.
I don't know why, probably because I have lots of them, but I decided to use ESP32s and Arduinos to control it all, and a PIC18 microcontroller thrown in for good measure, but the amount of wires and components involved has gone beyond a joke.
This is the rat's nest of shite I'd thrown at it before stopping and thinking "Fuck that!", and rethinking the whole thing.
We were talking about ultra small form factor 'puters on this thread lately, and I mentioned I had a Raspberry Pi going to waste, so I decided to replace all of it with the Pi and web based GUI, and rather than have another rat's nest of wires, I thought I'd have a go at a 'Pi Hat' PCB, that plugs directly into the Pi's GPIO header.
I sent the Gerber files to a PCB manufacturer in China on Tuesday afternoon, and ordered 10 boards from them. The boards arrived today
10 boards, including 3 day delivery, minus a $10 new user discount , came to just €18.
I always assumed it wouldn't be financially viable to get PCBs made, unless you were buying large quantities, but this is a game changer. I'll never again use jumper wires for anything other than a prototype.
Next problem is that since moving to this house over 3 years ago, I still haven't unpacked and sorted my electronics stuff, so I have to go through 6 bags of components to find the parts I need... starting with this one
I may be some time...