Printed a template to make a pcb for my repeater controller. Ink it, lay template on, and expose the ink to uv.

This is gonna be way better than my breadboard version!

Look into JLCPCB or ExpressPCB.  
JLC's cheaper if you have gerbers out of KiCad/Eagle/Altium/etc.
ExpressPCB's easy to learn and use, and their boards are quality.  Designs in their software have to be ordered through their fab shop, but once you place an order they'll provide gerbers if you want more later from a different fab shop.

For the price of PCB fab and ship, it's not worth the hassle of DIY boards.

I enjoy the diy. If I do order several boards, I use pcb way, mostly because I've used them a lot in the past.

Doing it in house is pretty cool IMO and shows just another neat thing that printers are good for. How many layers is that template?

It's a 2 layer print, .2mm per layer. The back is painted flat black to seal any holes up since it's just 2 layers.

It's been a fun project. A gang of 4 radios listens for signal on yagi antennas. Whichever radio gets the highest rssi value wins and its audio gets repeated cross band. A single yagi tx antenna gets pointed in the direction signal was received. So replies to that signal are clearer.

Wow, you designed a voting direction finding system!

I agree, would never have considered making a mask with a printer. Guess that also means you could sort of line art screen print with them as well.


I am thinking more about your logic using very directional antennas vs, say, corner types or something wider like panels. Do you completely lose signal at say NE/SW corners?

I had access to a mobile unit that simply used whips, and was sort of ok. Now I am wondering about antenna selection in general. Sorry for the thread slide

I'm using 4el yagis, they are still pretty wide. The design says 38 something degrees. I have a healthy collection of hand helds that I use for receive.

Initially I had a 3el rx yagi that I controlled with a stepper motor. The radiator was fixed and the 'boom' with the dir/ref rotated around the dipole. Kinda like a radar dome. But was kinda clunky and heavy. So I sniffed around a uv17 baofeng radio and found the rssi, cos, and rx audio pins. Then used fixed position yagis.

The rssi is fed into an stm32f103, along with the cos. When cos drops to 0 the speaker squelch is open. So that port is currently the winner. Then I check the rssi on the other 3 radios and which ever one has the highest rssi with a low css in the winner. The rx audio is switched into the tx radio, the ptt is pulled low and the tx transmits.

While the operator has the receive open and talking, the f103 starts a timer to run a stepper motor that makes the antenna rotate. The top yagi starts rotating in the direction of the winning signal so when the respons is sent back on the tx to the original signal its as directed as it can be.

It was mostly so my wife could still reach me when I was out more than 20 or so miles. But I didn't want her to have to keep rotating the beam around. This way as long as I'm in range of any of the 4 antennas it will 'find' me.

I got a few things to work out. Such as if I'm 20 miles north and a station 20miles south calls, the tx antenna will point its self south and I'll lose the tx. But when I try to respond it'll point the tx north to me. Which will make the south radio lose tx. But for now the second 'station' is my wife who is 300 feet away, so she can't lose tx signal regardless of direction.

Still a fun project.

Neat idea. I'd bet you could print the resist layer on the copper and etch.

I was gonna try it, but uv ink seemed better. But next time I'm def gonna print right on it.