I spent some time last year setting up an analog meter driver/thermometer for a client, and at the time, I went through my stock of junk^H^H^H^Hreclaimed parts and found a phase angle meter with degree graduations on it. I said to myself "since I alredy wrote the code and did the dev work on someone elses dime, I should throw one together for myself". A year and a half later, the holidays hit and I was looking for something to do instead of paperwork for work.
So, I layed out a single sided board (the original was on a launchpad), cut it on the mill, and populated it.
There was a couple days in the middle between cutting and populating (the holiday, you know), so I had a surprise. The astute amongst you might notice something missing on this layout, given that this is a low power project that will require stable voltage for the analog meter. Yup. No regulator pads.Finished soldering up the board and sitting there in the tray is the regulator. Whoops. I didn't feel like going whole hog (including changing a setup on the mill) for a board just to hold the regulator and a couple caps, so I pulled out a sharpie, a scribe, and an ancient bottle of ferric chloride. 20 minutes later, I had an etched board that would do the job. Ugly, but functional. The layout for the main board will be revised in case I reuse it.
It doesn't look so bad populated.
The wire is for USB power.