Hello everyone,

I wanted to kick off a discussion here about a trend we're all seeing in the industry, especially at the hobbyist and small-scale prototyping level.

We spend our time in DipTrace meticulously designing custom PCBs, optimizing layouts, and routing traces. But in the last decade, the market has been flooded with extremely powerful, low-cost Single-Board Computers (SBCs) like the Raspberry Pi 5, BeagleBone Black, and Jetson Nano.

For many projects, especially IoT or quick prototyping, it's often faster, cheaper, and less risky to build a HAT (Hardware Attached on Top) for a commercial SBC rather than design a complete, bespoke PCB from scratch around a microcontroller.

Do you feel this SBC effect is reducing the volume of entry-level custom design work? Are fewer engineers/hobbyists learning the full PCB design flow (the one we use DipTrace for) because the barrier to getting a functional prototype is now so low?

Or, conversely, does the accessibility of the SBC just mean people are moving on to more complex, higher-layer custom boards sooner?

What are your thoughts on the trade-off between the speed of using an off-the-shelf SBC versus the cost and control of a 100% custom board?

Looking forward to the discussion!