Hi, I’m looking for someone I can pay to design a simple circuit board. It will output a sine wave with it’s frequency depending on the value of a rotary switch. For example, if switch position 1 is selected then output 100hz, if position 2 is selected then output 200hz and so on.
If someone could recommend someone, or a company, that would be great. I am having a very hard time finding a company that is willing to work with a small operation.
Thanks!
I once got pulled into a project that had a very simple request such as yours, but as the project wore on more and more requirements got added on. Many hours got wasted for which I never got paid. So my advice is to write up a requirements document. Spell out things like voltage, current, frequency accuracy, what kind of power input, EMC requirements, environments, etc. This will make more work for you now, but it will greatly increase the chance of success in the end.
I have had two similar experiences with forum users disappearing after I had put in some work.
This forum is also (mostly) limited to helping people who are learning KiCad There are other better suited websites for job offerings.
In your full description you should include:
To bring an idea to a complete piece of hardware is not as simple as folks think.
I would suggest you find a piece of test equipment that can be controlled remotely. And control it with a switch.
You can read reviews for upwork, but you’ll get mixed results.
https://html.duckduckgo.com/html?q=review+upwork
A search for freelance pcb design gives a few links to upwork, but also lists a lot of other sites for freelance pcb design.
https://html.duckduckgo.com/html?q=freelance+pcb+design
Outsourcing a PCB design is no easy task. Getting the specifications clear of what has to be designed is problematic. How many different frequencies are there? How fast does it have to switch between frequencies? frequency and amplitude stability? Output levels? Power consumption? (battery or power supply? Does the project include the power supply, casing? Is the end result a product, or only PCB design files?
Simple analog function generator IC’s in which the frequency can be set with a single resistor have mostly gone obsolete (For example the XR2206) There are chinese copies of the XR2206, but they sort of half work. (most of the time). For a quick design, an IC such as AD9835 may be suitable (there are lots of other DDS IC’s) If you need many of the same circuit, the whole DDS part can be integrated into a microcontroller (provided max frequency is not too high.
And what about an COTS product? I have a (relatively cheap) JDS6600 function generator, and it can easily be set up so that the frequency changes with each step of a rotary encoder. Internally it does the DDS algorithm in an FPGA and it has an R-2R network for the output.
Also, with RepoRecon, you can find lots of KiCad related projects on github.
For example using RepoRecon to search for AD9845 finds:
AD9850 is another popular DDS IC and also finds some projects.
Using reporecon to search for DDS lots of other signal generators.
The primary problem with something like upwrok is how do you ensure regulatory compliance if you wish to sell products. There is lot of cases where the regulatory requirements may be orders of magnitude more expensive than the design itself. So it might be hard to find a person that is ready to do this for you because of the length of the product phase.
For other kinds of freelance work I used fiverr.com in the past. There are many hobbyists and professionals with different degrees of experience available.
You have to be clear where you are - working internationally gets messy with taxes
What are you planning to do with the product. “Placing on the market” often means CE or equivalent certification
This situation is by no means limited to obtaining services from free-lance professionals. It’s often a challenge even for long-established, fully-staffed companies. A former supervisor, in the role of “Project Engineer”, used to complain that he was being “eaten alive by youcans”. I.e., “You can just add this feature.”, “You can just ignore this problem.”, “You can just accelerate the schedule.”, “You can just build a couple of interim prototypes.”, “You can just make it compatible with this other product”, etc.
To make a good start on a successful project, the first step for the OP ( @victorb17 ) may be to hire somebody (possibly with a title like “System Engineer”) to work with him at creating a document(s) which thoroughly describe the specifications, performance requirements, and deliverable items for this design.
Dale
That’s funny, I observed some years ago the offending word was “just”, used in the sense above, or in other similar phrases, e.g. “why don’t you just do this” or “just add this”, etc. The word is used to make a task seem simple or easy, sometimes with the implication that if you don’t agree, you are shirking. It usually comes, with notable exceptions, from someone in marketing, sales, or similar. I’ve found that I can shut this down pretty quickly by responding in kind, as in “Why don’t you just fix our website?” or “Why don’t you just expand our customer base?”.
I’d be curious to know if and how something like this appears in languages other than English. Not that I would actually understand, since I am unfortunately monolingual.
John
As interesting as this discussion is, it’s more and more off- topic.