I just sent out my first PCBs for fabrication at batchpcb.com.  The first board is simply a Sparkfun breakout board for the WiFly.  As it turns out, it is cheaper to buy  the WiFly from another company and then pay to have a custom breakout board made, than it is to buy the combined assembly from Sparkfun.  However, this method does take more time, and requires more tools, but that is half the fun!

The second board is more interesting.  The Wattmeter Plug-in I wrote for the Piccolo requires a special sensor board to provide the voltage and current data to the Piccolo.  Originally this was made for a system that already had that component, so I didn’t need to do any work with that part.  Since every  PCB order comes with a $10 handling fee and the WiFly breakout only cost $5, I decided to make an attempt at making my own sensor board.

Simply named the VCsensor, the board is all through-hole components, mostly because that is what I have available. The board came out quite compact at less than one square inch which makes it cheaper to have fabricated.  When the boards come in I’ll find out the results of my first experiment in PCB fabrication.