General

• RF Design is hard, try to get some mentors and profs to help out
• Members need to have a good understanding of RF principles to do a lot of the work that is being done on the team - they can’t just be good at electrical or firmware or software

Electrical

• Get good RF equipment for testing
• Use Prof Shaker as a good resource and others
• Never purchase SDRs from a company named NooElec
• When there are ongoing supply chain crises like a global pandemic, make sure you order parts as soon as you’ve confirmed them within your architecture. That being said, don’t buy parts early either - as a team with a limited budget, we can’t afford to have parts wasted because of architectural changes. Do your research.
• Run design rule check multiple times
• Use a hotplate over a hot air station
• Practice soldering with 0603 and 0805 before going to 0402
• Place/soldering passives in a smart way. For example, sometimes the previous capacitor you soldered interferes with the current one you're trying to solder. This leads to knocking over the previous capacitor and needing to restart again. Try to work from one end to the other strategically.
• Hold hot air 90 degrees to the passive and not to the side. Holding it to the side blows the other passives away
• Don’t be afraid to use solder paste - tinning small pads with a hand iron is cringe
• Don’t hold hot air over the board for too long - it can burn traces and possible the board
• Debug smarter - use Oscilloscopes and DMMs rather than just brute-forcing everything (e.g. waiting until the end to test & simply testing the firmware to see if it works).
• Keeping good documentation with software is important to do from the get-go, otherwise, members working on a specific component of the software won’t understand what it’s for and may get confused.
• Keep track of tasks that have not been picked up by members (e.g. component selection like an antenna, or ground station work) - make sure it doesn’t slip through the cracks and actually gets done on time. Consider the priority of what you’re doing currently vs what hasn’t been done yet.
• Space via stitching out more to prevent the manufacturer from making them testpoints instead of vias.
  • Also, follow up with the manufacturer, specify & confirm that they're making them as vias and not test points.
• Make good test & bringup plans
  • Ideally: have an excel sheet/checklist
  • Document any changes that you make to boards while debugging
  • Write up an assembly plan once you’re done designing (e.g. documenting how to solder test points)