VI. HARDWARE MANUFACTURING
The decision to design and manufacture our own I/O board
was a reluctant one. Reluctant because manufacturing added
quite a lot of uncertainty and risk to the project – we started
design in July and we had to deliver the course in October;
we could change the course content but the dates were fixed.
After deciding to build a custom PCB in volume of 150
(to allow for production wastage, class growth and boards
for development and test), a major headache was sourcing
the components. While it’s possible to source components
like liquid crystal displays (LCDs) in single units in the UK,
finding a vendor who would sell 150 at acceptable prices
and in our constrained timeframe was difficult.