Rendering

I have a simple task, it is auto generating some images for PCB designs.

This all worked, nicely. There are two parts

• Get KiCAD to render the 3D model of board, and make an image.
• Get OpenSCAD to render a view of my case design.

In both cases I want a transparent background, anti-aliasing, and cropped around the edges.

KiCAD

KiCAD has a command line that lets you make a nice image render, on a transparent background. However I was not easily able to control which layers show, and it showed stuff I did not want shown. This may have improved since. But also I wanted to change a user layer to an Edge Cut and remove the original Edge Cut to allow me to render a broken out version of the PCB. So I wrote a simple function to edit the KiCAD file before rendering.

I rendered larger and then auto-cropped in gimp.

In panel view

Cut out of panel

OpenSCAD

For the case designs, I have OpenSCAD make STL files ready to print, but I also wanted a render as a PNG. So I asked OpenSCAD to render the STL. STL has no colour so I picked white. But OpenSCAD does not render on to a transparent background.

I got around this by setting white/shades for the object and a very specific light blue background which is not in the object. OpenSCAD did not do anti-aliasing which makes if very easy - render larger - change the blue to transparent, and scale down for anti-aliasing.

I did all that in one imagemagick command. Worked well.

Upgrades

I have since upgraded KiCAD, and OpenSCAD, and gimp.

GIMP

GIMP is really good, and I do not want to dis it, honest. But gimp scripting is nightmare.

You would expect something like a simple auto-crop would be a simple command line. It is not. I had to make a script-fu script and put in the right directory (which was version specific). On upgrade I have to move it, but did not work. I have to tell the command line which interpreter to use now.

Even then, the script is a nightmare. I just want to auto-crop and images, so maybe three steps: load image, auto crop image, save image.

If you search you find examples (not for latest gimp) like this!

I managed to make a much smaller script, but still. One annoyance seems to be that there is no one simple place to find documentation of what commands exist and what arguments for scripts. Also, confusingly, some are plugin- and some are gimp-. I got it working but mostly by trusting examples I found not finding clear documentation.

When I upgraded, it did not work. This was difficult. Most commands had changed name, as had some arguments. I eventually got loading the file to work, and setting background colour, and even autocrop. But save file would not work. It seems a path and a string are not the same somehow, but my filename string worked for load, not for save, so inconsistent.

I gave up. I realised that I was doing this for the KiCAD PCB images as well, and in that case I used imagemagick.

In imagemagick it is magick filename -trim filename, so really simple, and worked.

KiCAD

The KiCAD update created something odd where it was showing the User.1 layer I used for V-Cuts, which it did not before. I had to change my tool to strip that layer. And now the images cropped correctly.

OpenSCAD and Background colour

But the OpenSCAD was bugging me - this was not a new issue as such, just I ignored it before. The PNG images seemed to have a black background. Noticeably when I look at a thumbnail on MacOS. This was not happening on the KiCAD based images.

I assumed it was the background setting in the PNG, and that was somewhat confirmed when I used pngcheck which reported the image was a 16-bit greyscale image with a background of 0x00FF. That is nearly black. I found no way to change this. imagemagick seemed to be setting only an 8 bit value for background on a 16 bit greyscale image.

In desperation I coded some C to update a PNG to set the background to a white level, got it all working, but nothing changed! My code was setting to 0x00FF. I tracked down, the image is 8 bit greyscale not 16, so 0x00FF is correct! pngcheck was misreporting as 16 bit (or was counting the 8 bits alpha as part of it, confusingly).

The fix, eventually, was to avoid greyscale as it clearly upset the thumbnails. I forced the original format which was 8 bit RGBA but simply prefixing the output file in imagemagick with PNG00:

This was a lot of yak shaving this morning.

Tindie

Their communications have been really bad - hiding that there was a take over, not explaining what was happening, blaming planned maintenance with no explanation why not simply rolled back, and then PayPal issues which they claimed were fixed, but clearly are not.

We are well over a month now with Tindie being broken - by which I mean this.

Not paying sellers is not paying sellers. This has to be the end of Tindie as a business, surely?

We threatened legal action and they settled the balance by bank transfer, phew, but we cannot start re-stocking products, even with over $1600 of "waitlist" orders, until Tindie are actually normally and routinely paying sellers. That may never happen now, we'll see. Even if they do get back, we may only list one product there for a long while.

We are far from alone.

Someone has even made a "new Tindie", from scratch, in this time. The site https://smallrun.net/ have managed it, with IOSS, and US tariffs, and all sorts, all working, from scratch, which even Tindie do not manage. This proves that Tindie's delays make zero sense. They could have re-made Tindie from scratch in this time - so why buy Tindie at all in the first place? Nothing about this makes any sense at all. i.e. make a new working platform, then buy Tindie brand and domain, and make a seamless change over - that is what you do, unless you are, well, incompetent. Well, IMHO, they are that.

An existing provider that was smaller, and has now grown a lot as a result of this, is https://lectronz.com/ - they are cheaper and bigger than smallrun, but I wish smallrun all the best.

This is where we have set up shop now - if you found us on Tindie, go to https://shop.revk.uk which I can ensure goes to my shop (Lectronz now).

But Tindie are still not communicating and not actually fixing things. It is a shame, they clearly had a reputation which is now in shatters.

CE

CE marking is important for ensuring consumers are buying things that are safe and meet their expectations.

However, CE marking has a lot of implications, in terms of costs and tests, and so on. It basically outlaws your average "cottage industry" type set up.

With modern tech, that "cottage industry" can be technological.

But what if it is not "safe". And this is a very good point.

So there are sites like Tindie, and Lectronz, that act as a platform / marketplace to sell loads of tech that is "home grown" and "cottage industry", with a lot of caveats on T&Cs.

My personal view is ...

• Most consumers need robust consumer protection law
• Buying something should, by default, be 100% safe
• If, and only if, the seller is super amazingly clear on what they sell should there be exceptions.

Oddly this ties in to the utter stupidity that is the fact England and Wales allow selling "raw milk". It is crazy, but the laws require (a) higher hygiene standards, and importantly (b) VERY CLEAR warnings that what you are buying is not safe to drink!

So are PCBs the same?

I make a load of PCBs, and sell a load. As it happens, as a company, we also make some serious routers. For those there is a SHIT LOAD of stuff we do to make totally sure it meets all the requirements. I mean, heck, this is stuff using mains voltage inputs, so it matters. And it costs a lot.

But we also make small PCBs, hobbyist stuff, prototype boards. And the cost of CE marking would be mental. Make 10 PCBs and pay £10,000 for testing and certification. No. That does not work, does it?

So can we sell them without a CE?

This gets in to a grey area, as CE mark is needed for most things but not, for example, prototypes. Indeed, you can order a PCB from China for your own use, and no way they CE mark / certify it for you.

And, after all, if one cannot sell without a CE, then the CE mark itself is pointless - if all sold products have to meet the CE marking requirements there is no need for a CE mark to say they meet it. That only makes sense if there can indeed be products not marked CE and hence declaring they do not necessarily meet the requirements, and so keeping consumers informed of that fact.

Interestingly, one of the key aspects of CE for many of my boards is RF compatibility, and for that the ESP32 module I use is CE marked and certified.

But we want to be 100% clear to customers that these board are not certificated or tested beyond that. They are prototype/dev boards, for specialist/hobbyist use only.

So we came up with a new mark... NONCE (Thanks Alex for help making that). Maybe we should trademark that, LOL.

And to be clear, what we sell is generally PCBs, in a panel, break off excess parts, and so on. And even if we sell a case it is a two part resin 3D print you use to contain the snapped out PCB. The end user does the "final assembly", it is a "kit".

At the end of the day we would not want to, in any way whatsoever, mislead a customer as to what they are buying, ever.

P.S. Apparently I need to explain we are not actually marking boards NONCE, that part is a joke!

Customising PCBs

It is pretty impressive what you can do with "silk screen" printing on PCBs these days. I think JLC even offer full colour now (not tried it). I imagine they have a UV printer.

But for some of my smaller run boards, doing an over print of the assembled PCB could be very useful.

I already have code to make 3D cases from PCB files - I can see me automating making an SVG overprint from the files.

Cheeky domains

I have a "shop" on Tindie (albeit currently all zero stock until they get working again, if ever) and now one on "Lectronz".

Ages ago I made tindie.uk domain, it web redirects to the shop on Tindie. Was a bit of fun. And a shortcut for me.

Now I have a Lectronz shop, so I made lectronz.uk in a similar way.

But this is a tad naughty maybe. Well maybe.

• As far as I know neither have a UK trademark so I could even make a legitimate business matching theirs, and even register a UK trademark, if I wanted, using their name.
• They could dispute with Nominet, but if I then did a UK trademark, I may manage to keep it.
• The URLs do actually go to their web sites (albeit my "shop" on their web site) so is not, in that respect, a breach of trademark - it references *them* - so just like someone selling Nike shoes can use the word Nike to do so, in an advert for their "shop". I'm selling/referencing their platform.

But yes, it is cheeky, shall we say. And in hindsight maybe a tad childish and not like me...

So now, given that Tindie is a waste of space compared to Lectronz, even when Tindie is working (which they have not been for a month), I now have a much simpler URL:

https://shop.revk.uk/

It goes to Lectronz.

FYI, if Tindie do come back I may list Faikout only, like we do on Amazon. Lectronz is likely to be the main place for any of the other circuit boards (and Faikout). Amazon only continue because they are one of the first places people go, still, so sensible to be on there, and they handle EU VAT, and shipping - but Lectronz do the EU VAT and US tariffs, so Amazon are only there to mop up on their reputation, as it is.

What is funny about Tindie is being off for a month is that someone has made a "new Tindie" from scratch and got on line and working during that month - https://smallrun.net/. To be fair, if I put my mind to it, I am sure I could. They even have tariffs and EU IOSS all sorted (which Tindie do not, still). How Tindie are so slow and so bad at communicating is really quite amazing.

&

The ampersand used to be consider the 27th letter of the latin alphabet...

i.e. ex, why, zed, "and - per say - and"... I.e. "and" was a letter after zed (Z).

Then came XML and HTML.

As a company with and ampersand in the official actual company name this has been, shall we say, challenging.

We had serious issues with BT XML order integration for some time.

But more lately.

Nominet say things like this...

    Registrar:

        Andrews & Arnold Limited [Tag = AAISP]

        URL: https://aa.net.uk

Yeah, that is NOT our company name.

Other examples, in that past, with bank payee verification showing ANDREWS ARNOLD LIMITED, so I created ANDREWS ARNOLD LIMITED registered (company 12972728) to complain that a different company was being shown than  us.

Now, for Nominet, I decided why not register ANDREWS & ARNOLD LIMITED. Then complain they are using a different company in whois...

To be honest I should have just renamed 12972728, but have done it now as separate company.

Firstly Companies House did not consider an 05555 phone number valid. Hmmm. But I did a different number, and applied for the company.

Now I get an email. An email to my x@x.xx format email address to tell me that my email address is invalid...

Yes, read that again. It is a kind of SPECIAL!

I called them, and well, the person I spoke to kind of appreciated the irony here. Emailing me to tell me my email is invalid, is, well, special.

She said the system was fine but a person, an examiner, rejected based on the email address. She has sent a memo to not reject that email. We'll see.

Why can people not simple follow standards, for email addresses, for phone numbers, for everything.

I have applied again. Once I have new company I can then complain to Nominet over whois.

And again rejected. Another weird one is when logging in to gov gateway using x@x.xx format address they say they are emailed a code to xx@x.xx !!! They actually email x@x.xx address, but why double the first letter when shown on screen... Hang on, I get the show first...last letter and a one letter address confuses the hell out of that. That makes more sense, but is still stupid.

Oh, there is more! The email from Companies house was wrong. It stripped & to &. Wow. How is this hard in this day and age?!

Lectronz and IOSS

We sell lots in the UK (services and goods), and handle UK VAT, obviously.

Some of you may be surprised that A&A sell all over the world as well - development circuit boards. I have mentioned it, I am sure.

For now, we have used Amazon and Tindie.

Both are a problem...

Amazon

Two good aspects of Amazon, one is they will do fulfilment, so we send stock and they ship to customers. and secondly they handle selling to EU, etc, and the VAT and so on. We do not have to worry about it, and for these exports we are paid the VAT exclusive price.

Amazon have been arseholes, they unlisted the most popular product on a mere accusation, took months to sort with frozen stock, and finally returned after I threatened to sue. We lost all the reputation and reviews, and new listing of same item is selling 20% of the rate.

We now only list this one popular(ish) product on Amazon, as they do sell some, and sell to EU easily. But they did screw us over for no reason.

Tindie

Tindie are useless at tax and VAT. We have to do the shipping. However, we have integrated their API such that staff can see a list of orders, click and get postage via Royal Mail (with all the customs declaration stuff). They put in a jiffy bag, stick on label, and postman collects with the rest of the days postage.

Tindie were selling pretty well, close to Amazon rates, and sometimes more. But we had to ship. The much more slick postage integration I recently did makes it a lot easier and my staff can take over many of the products we sell without any hassle.

Tindie then shut down with no warning for maintenance, lied about it for two weeks, finally said new owners, made site live but with the one important feature of "paying us" (or anyone else) missing. We shipped some more orders, but have now zeroed all stock until sorted. They claim to have sent balance, but we will not know for sure for a day or two.

Lectronz

So we have signed up with Lectronz. They are tiny compared to Tindie, but that seems to be changing (I wonder why!).

They work the same as Tindie, free to list, charge a fee for sales, and card processing charges too (stripe). They even have Tindie API integration to import products (they then need a little work, and Tindie may be blocking some of it).

But they have a lot of extra bits...

Better shipping rates

The shipping is saner, it is all linked to sets of countries, but is all weight based. You set the shipping for a weight range, and you can also set a tariff rate for US as a percentage! This is lacking in Tindie.

They don't have a shipping rate that is price + price per kg (I have asked) as that would be even better as that is how we pay Royal Mail for international shipping.

Tariffs for US

But this means sales to US show (and charge) a specific tariff fee - very clear, and we link in to doing PDDP shipping with Royal Mail.

VAT for UK

We can, and have, told them we are VAT registered and selling to UK has 20% VAT. They shows this and add it at point of sale. Simple.

VAT for EU

This is where it gets fun. For orders shipped to EU, under (I think) €150, they will automatically work out the EU VAT based on target country, and add to the price.

They deduct this from what they pay us, and settle with EU VAT authorities for us.

They then tell us an IOSS code to use with Royal Mail to record as a pre-paid VAT. The customer then has no hassle with paying VAT on import.

This is really hassle free for us and the customer.

Other countries still have VAT on import and so is any order to EU over €150, but they managed to make that all very clear on the checkout page.

Do buy some stuff, here. I will be adding more and more soon.