I started a deep dive in electronic music and synthesizers in the last couple of months, and have been thoroughly enjoying playing the productions units I own (Korg Monologue, Elektron Digitakt, Roland JV1080), but have even more so enjoyed the sort of free form effort of building my own instrument:
That started out as a nightmare breadboarded voltage controlled oscillator, to a nicely breadboarded vco, to a rebuild on perf board, and then obviously I needed a perfboard power supply. But, once I wanted a mixer, I needed +/- 12v, not just 5v, so that led to a better iteration of the power supply, etc. It's a rabbit hole, but an immensely educational and fairly inexpensive one. I figure I'm about 3 months and a couple of YouTube tutorials away from my first Kicad developed oshpark printed PCB, and I have a ton of ideas for next steps, and prototypes in flight (CES3340 based VCO, Arduino MIDI control and CV translation, Lowpass/bandmiss filters, so on and so forth).
Back to the subject of the original post, this totally looks like Pennsylvania, and if it is and the engineer who built this is in the job market, and has any interest in working for a smaller, established (20 year) shop that lives in one of the automotive spaces doing a lot of cool custom hardware/software development, I'd happily accept a resume.
When my child was born I spent my paternity leave getting started with Arduino, and ESP8266 devices. These days I've kinda stalled, but there's something fun about making the hardware and the software, and getting back to the limits I used to "enjoy" with limited RAM/flash-space.
Mostly my projects are put together for learning, then the parts are recycled, but there are a few projects dotted around the house that have stayed in-place for a couple of years now.
(Wireless temperature/humidity sensors, along with tram-departure information, etc.)
I ran into my own discouraging brick wall when trying to figure out how to fabricate metal control panels/enclosures and printing labels on them without expensive cutting equipment.
https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/474-PRT-10811
Now I'm using the same barrel jacks, but with an old linksys wall wart.
That said, it's not an ideal situation, and I'll most likely build something like this in the not too distant future:
http://musicfromouterspace.com/analogsynth_new/WALLWARTSUPPL...
https://www.getfpv.com/holybro-kakute-f7-aio-flight-controll...
https://shop.holybro.com/c/kakute-f7_0486
Or you can get the version that combines a four motor ESC in a stack with the version of the Kakute F7 that doesn't have a built in PDB (power distribution board), for under $120.
https://shop.holybro.com/kakute-f7-amp-tekko32-f3-metal-4in1...
other parts needed to complete something: motors, propellers, frame, battery, video tx (for something like 5.8 GHz band goggles), RC receiver, wiring, ublox m8n GPS receiver.
want a cheap frame? It'll be heavier than ordering a $45 carbon fiber frame from banggood or gearbest or aliexpress or such, but you can 3d print one at the cost of maybe half of a spool of $18 PLA filament:
Total flight time was around thirty seconds because I managed to crash it twice, but live and learn.
For a small quadcopter, $400-500 total parts cost, anything below that will involve a lot of quality compromises.
Take a look at some of the RTF / ready to fly specifications sold by getfpv.com or helipal.com for examples.
The opposite of janky was prostyle. There was no middle ground.
Also, I recently added a comment with a photo album if you are interested!
Some of you wanted a photo album of the journey; I quickly collected one here [0]. Apologies for duplicates, no descriptions, and Google.
The full album shows a lot more of the process, but I also linked some quick highlights / milestones at the end of this comment.
Also, to those who were wondering, I am still in the market for a Summer 2019 internship.
I really ought to have a blog post detailing more of this, but here's a little backstory anyway. My best friend from high school and I wanted to experiment with creating our own modular drones, and although we bought a bunch of parts, we ended up leaving for college before we could do anything. A couple years later I had some time on my hands, and I decided that I wanted to see whether or not I could actually build and program a drone myself. For the project, I tried to focus on writing high quality software while still managing to build something flyable with my nearly-nonexistent mechanical skills. Even though much of this project was physical (and electrical), I still largely consider this a software project, actually.
Physically, my prototypes are something you might laugh at. Zip ties, styrofoam, and Gorilla tape were my go-to materials for the most part. I originally started by mounting (read: zip-tying and taping) components to PVC tubes and metal sheets; combined with the pretty large LiPo battery I bought, it should have been no wonder that four motors were no match for the weight of the thing. I later decided to screw together 6 strips of carbon fiber sheet (a "frame") and add two motors to help assure my drone can actually lift greater than two inches off the ground at a time. Reworking the flight controller to work with six motors instead of just two was a fun challenge; I decided to make the flight controller support an unlimited number of motors in a circle while I was at it.
Figuring out the optimal wireless technology for the drone was a bit of a process as well. It was frustrating when I thought I had everything ready for a test flight, but then slowly realized that, perhaps, I wasn't going to be able to get away with using Bluetooth LE over non-trivial distances. Eventually I found a radio module with superb distance and transmission rate; and after some struggle, I got them working. You can see in the video that I could control the drone from quite far away!
It took quite a few days of test "flights" to get the drone to fly as well as it did in the video (if you consider the oscillating nightmare in the video "flying well"). Even getting the drone to launch two feet in the air, instantly lose control and backflip, and crash back down on the ground felt like an AMAZING feat from my perspective; it demonstrated all my systems were at least online and functional. I slowly increased the hover time of each attempt by a couple seconds or so, adjusting my controller tuning and implementation as I went. The flight in the video was nowhere near as primitive as some of my early experiments, even.
I'm sure I skimped on many details, don't hesitate to ask for more information on anything.
[0]: Full album: https://photos.app.goo.gl/QhSZEyd4DA1r9S9G6
First physical prototype: https://photos.app.goo.gl/k6km6Hyrkq4FuxkH9
Second physical prototype: https://photos.app.goo.gl/sL1LjnAgeXrmGvgEA
Third physical prototype: https://photos.app.goo.gl/bY33peH7RZbXPxyx9
LED strip code testing: https://photos.app.goo.gl/wZJJJ4NrFENjpUkHA
Custom remote control assembled: https://photos.app.goo.gl/z577cVbH59vjW3g56
Final "boxy" physical prototype: https://photos.app.goo.gl/8ESsQidi5Tgsb1mm6
Drilling is a pain in the ass. The bits break easily and drilling accurately, even with a press, is hard. Milling makes this so much easier. Then you need to think about plated through holes, do you rivet? Do you just put some 30 gauge wire and solder?
Nowadays I find I rarely need to rush boards and Oshpark is so cheap it's ridiculous. There are cheaper companies (I've yet to try Dirty PCB), but you get 3 boards, ENIG and really good tolerances for free. Even rush shipping ($20 international fedex) is cheaper than getting it done here in the UK. The only competitor I've found is Ragworm, and they're both more expensive and you only get one board with HASL.
Unless you really want a board made now, I would say just get them made for you. The quality is so much better without spending tons of time. Of course sometimes you really do want a prototype instantly and if you want to make a weird shape - perhaps a really long rectangle that would cost a fortune to get made, it's worth having the kit in your house to do.
On the milling side, I'd be tempted just to buy a Spokeo mill which can apparently do reasonably good PCB milling. Costs a lot, but at least it'll do other things as well.
I've recently got access to a lab with some very expensive rapid protoptying kit (from LPKF), which I'm keen to try out. It can even do 3D PCBs laid onto plastic components.
I'm not sure what you mean here. Since it's just KiCAD and then you can get boards for cheap, why is it hard to start the investment?