Custom ESP32-S3 development board — professionally manufactured by JLCPCB. A far cry from where it all started. It Started in a School Science Lab — Around 1998 Most people who get into electronics start with a kit, a tutorial, maybe a breadboard and some LEDs. I started by sneaking ferric chloride out of a school science lab to etch my first PCB. That was around 1998. I was living in the Maldives — a small island nation in the Indian Ocean — where there was no electronics supply chain, no maker community, no local PCB fab. Just a chemistry cabinet at school, a copper-clad board from somewhere, and a lot of curiosity. This post is about what the next 25+ years of PCB prototyping looked like from there. The early wins with proper chemicals, the years of improvisation when those chemicals disappeared, the real injuries, the failed boards, and finally — the moment JLCPCB changed ever...
Now the code has been cut down to less that 30 lines. here is a part of the code...
do{
if(input(pin_a0))
{
test = 0b11011011;
}
else if(input(pin_a1))
{
test = 0b10011001;
}
for(i=0;i<8;i++)
{
value = bit_test(test,i);
output_low(S_CLK);
output_low(L_CLK);
if(value==1)
{
output_bit(Data,1);
output_bit(S_CLK,value);
output_bit(Data,0);
}
else if(value==0)
{
output_bit(S_CLK,1);
output_bit(S_CLK,0);
}
do{
if(input(pin_a0))
{
test = 0b11011011;
}
else if(input(pin_a1))
{
test = 0b10011001;
}
for(i=0;i<8;i++)
{
value = bit_test(test,i);
output_low(S_CLK);
output_low(L_CLK);
if(value==1)
{
output_bit(Data,1);
output_bit(S_CLK,value);
output_bit(Data,0);
}
else if(value==0)
{
output_bit(S_CLK,1);
output_bit(S_CLK,0);
}
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