pcbway and jlcpcb sponsorships, especially on hobby electronics YT videos, are quite interesting case.
On one hand they seem redundant at this point. Both companies are well known to the target audience to the point of saturation, there isn't really any serious competition (in terms of capabilities, speed and price) and yet they keep sponsoring more projects.
On the other hand, it's probably the sponsorship I tolerate the most. Both are genuine companies unlike all the borderline scams such as all the vpns, brilliant, mobile games, etc.
A lot of these videos get recommended to me, and although I haven't done hardware designs in 10+ years at this point, it's pushing me to get back into it again - and PCBWay lives in my head rent-free for when I do. If it were a one-off sponsorship I'd have forgotten about it, but the consistency across a load of different channels really cements it.
To be honest, without the sponsorship from PCBWay I would probably have stopped making videos on my channel.
It’s not a lot of money - but there is an informal commitment that I will try and produce a video a month. It’s also very on brand for my content - hobby electronics with a focus on embedded (ESP32 range of microcontrollers).
I think the videos are entertaining and educational. Actual viewer numbers fluctuate wildly and despite over 50K subscribers - a “successful” video for my channel is around 3000 views (channel is in my profile).
I still find it amazing that I can get PCBs manufactured at such an affordable price. Even SMD assembly is reasonably priced. Short production runs are more than doable at the amateur level.
I absolutely love your project and I hope it will become a breakout success. It has all the right components for a computing environment that is not controlled.
Have you thought about RISC-V implementations of the kernel as well (iirc you're on ARM and on x64)?
Oh, it only gets better. Thank you so much. If you ever get to the point where you have something ready to order please drop me a line (mail in profile) and I'll buy one set to evaluate and if it works well I will get some more people on it.
The board is part of the CI pipeline for the OS. The kernel is built in the normal CI pipeline, unit tested, etc. then platform-specific images are built.
Those are picked up by GitHub CI runners (could be anything but I'm using GH for now) that pull those image artifacts and send them over the internet to the board, which stores them on the microSD slot.
Then the board will boot the device-under-test (either by enabling a USB VBUS line, asserting PS_ON and pressing the power button, whatever the device needs) and will serve the image either a via USB mass device or by switching on access to the microSD card directly via a ribbon connector/custom microSD PCB and ribbon cable.
The kernel then communicates over serial back to the Link, which proxies that back up to the CI runner for evaluating test runs, etc.
Everything is configured using MQTT and mDNS. Using async Rust via Embassy for the firmware.
5-pin on the bottom left is for power - 5V 2A 'always on' supply (on the ATX24 adapters that's the 5vsb line), 5V 3A aux line (for VBUS, optional and not otherwise used to power the board itself), a sense line for the aux power (board will shut down and display an error on over-current of the main line if not sensed), active-low aux line enable signal (PS_ON for ATX24 sources), and ground.
This means that it's used to cut power on x86 machines, or to use a stock desktop PSU even for arm/riscv dev boards. In the future I want to make this all rack mounted and have a dedicated power supply for multiples of these.
The value of this kind of sponsorship is not as much about becoming know to the target audience but creating the environment to grow the number of audience.
Some of them just seem like a good deal. Imagine how much value is generated from Marco Reps revealing where the ppms are kept to thousands of young engineers a year in exchange for a few one-time payments. Value for PCBway from planting customer seeds and value for society by cultivating people who can actually do things.
The Coca Cola company still makes advertisements, even though everyone already knows about Coke. You have to keep your name in the top of your target audience’s mind.
At this point I think it's about creating new audience. I've been to a talk where a jlcpcb teached programmers how to build an NFC business card - most of these guys wouldn't know where to start with electronics but some of them are dabbling in them rn.
Useful overview of PCBWay's capabilities. I might consider switching from JLCPCB.
Design critique - I would put the mounting holes further from the board edge, for added strength. The screw heads are going to overhang a certain amount anyway.
I suspect more and more hobbyists are using 3.3V microcontrollers like the ESP32, Raspberry Pi Pico, and countless Adafruit offerings. Unless you know your project won't need much processing power, I don't see much reason to use a 5V "ATmega..." -based Arduino these days. Much easier to use a cheap £2 32-bit overkill processor than to deal with running out of RAM, etc. Also, most advanced sensors I've seen have 3.3V logic levels now.
It's not about business (or being bought). It's about my hobby. This is the email they sent me:
---
Your BurgerDisk project is an ingenious way to modernize Apple II storage, showcasing your expertise.
This is Emily from PCBWay. I'd like to sponsor your projects with free PCB prototyping.
A brief review would be appreciated in return.
Would you be interested?
---
This is my reply:
---
OK, why not, as long as my review is my own and honest :) What is the budget ?
---
I then published my post without them pre-screening it. It's a honest, factual review about how it goes to have PCBWay make an assembled PCB. They didn't even ask me to share it on any social media.
What I got out of it is a few hours of fun (because this is my hobby) routing a (rather simple) PCB, and a batch of twenty modules that I didn't have to use my pocket money for.
This is all. Don't overthink it.
I do sell my device. It's mostly as a service to the community members who don't have the equipment, time or skill to assemble it themselves, as it is a free software, open hardware project; it's not going to replace my salaried job in any foreseeable timeframe, and it's not the goal.
Even if he had written a bad review, it would almost certainly still have resulted in a backlink to PCBWay which increases their Page Rank and search engine performance.
Does JLC now easily allow you to use any component that’s available from LCSC? Last time I checked, there was only a limited component library available for the standard assembly process.
Ah yeah, maybe it's easier than they make it seem, but I've found PCBWay preferable for small batch assembly because they just take a list of MPNs and give you back a quote, which is the service that I really want. Preordering etc. is detail that I don't really want to care about.
This is exactly what I like about JLC - the fact that some human doesn't have to be involved in the quoting process and that I can select parts from LCSC. The software handles everything.
Getting a human involved in quoting makes it more expensive and it gives these vendors an opportunity to BOM substitute for cheaper Chinese alternative parts.
Totally fair that you prefer JLC's approach. There's clearly room in the market for different models.
Part substitution is mainly a question of trust. As far as I understand it, you preorder parts through JLC's website, so JLC could easily automatically sub out your passives if they wanted to. For all that people worry about this a lot, I'm not sure if the incentive to do it is really there for shops like JLC or PCBWay. The components that are easy to substitute are cheap anyway, and these companies can easily just pass on any additional cost to the customer. I'm not personally going to haggle with PCBWay over a few additional pennies for a chip resistor or ceramic capacitor, given that the entire service is mind-blowingly cheap.
> All those tech guys getting the PCB Way sponsorship really don’t know business do they.
Eh.
For a hobbyist it's pretty neat. I don't expect to be extracting a lot of value from hobbyist PCB designs.
That some PCB manufacturer is willing to do a small batch of my PCB design & I don't have to pay for it, just give them a shout out & write about it, that seems pretty neat.
can you elaborate a bit on this? How much do other companies pay for, say, a 30 second slot promoting their product?
I'm not in the monetization business yet, but I'm thinking about creating a YT channel and stream some DIY/hardware related things, so I'm genuinely curious on how much such sponsors really pay.
I have compensated hundreds to thousands of dollars to content creators to promote my products and have had content creators ask for thousands up front. It really depends on channel size and market. It also depends on what deliverables are being asked for. Logo on screen, 30 second advertisement reading, link in description, pinned comments, accompanying social media post, etc. Some content creators will haggle on all the pieces while others will accept a flat rate for a typical package deal of deliverables.
Tangential but since it's in the title...
pcbway and jlcpcb sponsorships, especially on hobby electronics YT videos, are quite interesting case.
On one hand they seem redundant at this point. Both companies are well known to the target audience to the point of saturation, there isn't really any serious competition (in terms of capabilities, speed and price) and yet they keep sponsoring more projects.
On the other hand, it's probably the sponsorship I tolerate the most. Both are genuine companies unlike all the borderline scams such as all the vpns, brilliant, mobile games, etc.
A lot of these videos get recommended to me, and although I haven't done hardware designs in 10+ years at this point, it's pushing me to get back into it again - and PCBWay lives in my head rent-free for when I do. If it were a one-off sponsorship I'd have forgotten about it, but the consistency across a load of different channels really cements it.
To be honest, without the sponsorship from PCBWay I would probably have stopped making videos on my channel.
It’s not a lot of money - but there is an informal commitment that I will try and produce a video a month. It’s also very on brand for my content - hobby electronics with a focus on embedded (ESP32 range of microcontrollers).
I think the videos are entertaining and educational. Actual viewer numbers fluctuate wildly and despite over 50K subscribers - a “successful” video for my channel is around 3000 views (channel is in my profile).
I still find it amazing that I can get PCBs manufactured at such an affordable price. Even SMD assembly is reasonably priced. Short production runs are more than doable at the amateur level.
I learned circuit design and went from not knowing what a ground plane was to having an 8 layer board working in three years.
https://GitHub.com/oro-os/link
It probably wouldn't hold up super well to professional scrutiny but everything on it works.
I would not have been able to do it without companies like JLC. It made an entire industry approachable, which is old fashioned 'good business' IMO.
I absolutely love your project and I hope it will become a breakout success. It has all the right components for a computing environment that is not controlled.
Have you thought about RISC-V implementations of the kernel as well (iirc you're on ARM and on x64)?
Thank you! I'm working on a refactor of the kernel now that has all three, yes :)
Oh, it only gets better. Thank you so much. If you ever get to the point where you have something ready to order please drop me a line (mail in profile) and I'll buy one set to evaluate and if it works well I will get some more people on it.
Can you talk more about the design of the board?
Also, what's that large five pin connector in the bottom left for?
The board is part of the CI pipeline for the OS. The kernel is built in the normal CI pipeline, unit tested, etc. then platform-specific images are built.
Those are picked up by GitHub CI runners (could be anything but I'm using GH for now) that pull those image artifacts and send them over the internet to the board, which stores them on the microSD slot.
Then the board will boot the device-under-test (either by enabling a USB VBUS line, asserting PS_ON and pressing the power button, whatever the device needs) and will serve the image either a via USB mass device or by switching on access to the microSD card directly via a ribbon connector/custom microSD PCB and ribbon cable.
The kernel then communicates over serial back to the Link, which proxies that back up to the CI runner for evaluating test runs, etc.
Everything is configured using MQTT and mDNS. Using async Rust via Embassy for the firmware.
5-pin on the bottom left is for power - 5V 2A 'always on' supply (on the ATX24 adapters that's the 5vsb line), 5V 3A aux line (for VBUS, optional and not otherwise used to power the board itself), a sense line for the aux power (board will shut down and display an error on over-current of the main line if not sensed), active-low aux line enable signal (PS_ON for ATX24 sources), and ground.
This means that it's used to cut power on x86 machines, or to use a stock desktop PSU even for arm/riscv dev boards. In the future I want to make this all rack mounted and have a dedicated power supply for multiples of these.
Interesting thought. PCBWay and JLCPCB sponsoring channels to show use-cases of their capability, thus growing their market.
Would be similar to the distributer/producer of a food item sponsoring channels to use their ingredient in recipes.
Makes a lot of sense.
Long time fan of atomic14, thanks for all your videos!
It's interesting perspective and I'm happy to hear it works well for you.
Are you willing to say how much they pay you?
I watch all your videos by the way. By the PCB Way!
The value of this kind of sponsorship is not as much about becoming know to the target audience but creating the environment to grow the number of audience.
Some of them just seem like a good deal. Imagine how much value is generated from Marco Reps revealing where the ppms are kept to thousands of young engineers a year in exchange for a few one-time payments. Value for PCBway from planting customer seeds and value for society by cultivating people who can actually do things.
The Coca Cola company still makes advertisements, even though everyone already knows about Coke. You have to keep your name in the top of your target audience’s mind.
At this point I think it's about creating new audience. I've been to a talk where a jlcpcb teached programmers how to build an NFC business card - most of these guys wouldn't know where to start with electronics but some of them are dabbling in them rn.
That makes sense. They have definitely made the hobby a lot more approachable.
The thing is, even though my first order with JLC was almost 7 years ago now, I first heard about them via a YouTube sponsership.
New people enter the hobby every day, they are just advertising to "todays lucky 10,000" https://xkcd.com/1053/
Useful overview of PCBWay's capabilities. I might consider switching from JLCPCB.
Design critique - I would put the mounting holes further from the board edge, for added strength. The screw heads are going to overhang a certain amount anyway.
I suspect more and more hobbyists are using 3.3V microcontrollers like the ESP32, Raspberry Pi Pico, and countless Adafruit offerings. Unless you know your project won't need much processing power, I don't see much reason to use a 5V "ATmega..." -based Arduino these days. Much easier to use a cheap £2 32-bit overkill processor than to deal with running out of RAM, etc. Also, most advanced sensors I've seen have 3.3V logic levels now.
Hi, author here.
It's not about business (or being bought). It's about my hobby. This is the email they sent me:
--- Your BurgerDisk project is an ingenious way to modernize Apple II storage, showcasing your expertise.
This is Emily from PCBWay. I'd like to sponsor your projects with free PCB prototyping. A brief review would be appreciated in return.
Would you be interested? ---
This is my reply:
--- OK, why not, as long as my review is my own and honest :) What is the budget ? ---
I then published my post without them pre-screening it. It's a honest, factual review about how it goes to have PCBWay make an assembled PCB. They didn't even ask me to share it on any social media.
What I got out of it is a few hours of fun (because this is my hobby) routing a (rather simple) PCB, and a batch of twenty modules that I didn't have to use my pocket money for.
This is all. Don't overthink it.
I do sell my device. It's mostly as a service to the community members who don't have the equipment, time or skill to assemble it themselves, as it is a free software, open hardware project; it's not going to replace my salaried job in any foreseeable timeframe, and it's not the goal.
Hope that clears things up,
Colin
Does anyone know why the "matte" boards are not the default? They look so much better.
(I suspect they are more expensive only because they are nonstandard)
It's easier to clean a smooth surface
The matte boards are quite easy to clean with some IPA and a brush.
Even if he had written a bad review, it would almost certainly still have resulted in a backlink to PCBWay which increases their Page Rank and search engine performance.
100 bucks?! This man is easily bought
Does JLC now easily allow you to use any component that’s available from LCSC? Last time I checked, there was only a limited component library available for the standard assembly process.
They always have, but for parts they don't have in stock you must preorder (with a few days of lead time.)
Ah yeah, maybe it's easier than they make it seem, but I've found PCBWay preferable for small batch assembly because they just take a list of MPNs and give you back a quote, which is the service that I really want. Preordering etc. is detail that I don't really want to care about.
This is exactly what I like about JLC - the fact that some human doesn't have to be involved in the quoting process and that I can select parts from LCSC. The software handles everything.
Getting a human involved in quoting makes it more expensive and it gives these vendors an opportunity to BOM substitute for cheaper Chinese alternative parts.
Totally fair that you prefer JLC's approach. There's clearly room in the market for different models.
Part substitution is mainly a question of trust. As far as I understand it, you preorder parts through JLC's website, so JLC could easily automatically sub out your passives if they wanted to. For all that people worry about this a lot, I'm not sure if the incentive to do it is really there for shops like JLC or PCBWay. The components that are easy to substitute are cheap anyway, and these companies can easily just pass on any additional cost to the customer. I'm not personally going to haggle with PCBWay over a few additional pennies for a chip resistor or ceramic capacitor, given that the entire service is mind-blowingly cheap.
$100?
A PCB Way sponsorship pays $100?
You show their logo, talk about them thank them praise them for $100? And it’s not even cash?
All those tech guys getting the PCB Way sponsorship really don’t know business do they.
That is absolutely insane.
For some small channels, $100 could be more than what youtube pays for their video.
And PCBway sponsors a lot of channels.
yes I'm sure they pay everyone the same amount no matter if it's a small blog or a big YouTube channel, everyone gets $100
> All those tech guys getting the PCB Way sponsorship really don’t know business do they.
Eh.
For a hobbyist it's pretty neat. I don't expect to be extracting a lot of value from hobbyist PCB designs.
That some PCB manufacturer is willing to do a small batch of my PCB design & I don't have to pay for it, just give them a shout out & write about it, that seems pretty neat.
can you elaborate a bit on this? How much do other companies pay for, say, a 30 second slot promoting their product?
I'm not in the monetization business yet, but I'm thinking about creating a YT channel and stream some DIY/hardware related things, so I'm genuinely curious on how much such sponsors really pay.
I have compensated hundreds to thousands of dollars to content creators to promote my products and have had content creators ask for thousands up front. It really depends on channel size and market. It also depends on what deliverables are being asked for. Logo on screen, 30 second advertisement reading, link in description, pinned comments, accompanying social media post, etc. Some content creators will haggle on all the pieces while others will accept a flat rate for a typical package deal of deliverables.