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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.