Custom PCBs for the beginner

After a superb PiWars conference a couple of weeks ago, plus some encouragement from across the seas, I'm going to make a custom PCB, or to be more correct two custom PCBs, for the timing device. At present, the most time consuming thing when building the devices is all the soldered wire connections between the modules. Plus the fixing of the components to the interior of the case is not as slick or fast as I would like.

But.... I am no electronics expert, and if we want a PCB this century I'm not going to be able to reverse engineer the modules. So, the plan is to make two large PCBs, one for each side of the case. Each side will have mountings for modules (soldered), effectively reducing the wire connections to just a short cable (with a connector) joining both sides and the aerial connectors.

This allows me to incorporate a much higher performance Adafruit PN532 NFC reader into the design, although it will need a ferrite shielding panel.

Find out about PiWars here - https://piwars.org/