I am sure there's a staggering number of boards made that way, most of which work first time, or only require simple tools to debug and get working.You'd be surprised how many boards get made with nothing more then KiCad, a soldering iron and a multimeter.I would presume someone producing such a board would have access to suitable tools to figure it out, have access to people experienced with hardware debugging. Hands-on debugging is always easier than remote debugging.
But when it comes to more advanced or higher-speed boards, where placement, tracking, and other things are critical, there's a lot more which can go wrong and be difficult to diagnose and debug without specialist tools, skills and experience.
We don't have counts of how many DIY RP2 builds work first time or don't, so there's no ratio or percentage chance of success one can give, but I count some 115 posts in this sub-forum alone where such a build did not work and help was needed.
My view is it is walking a potentially frustrating and expensive path if it can be predicted you will need tools, skills and experience you don't have if things don't work first time. Given the potential for it all being wasted effort and sunk cost I usually steer clear of such projects and would advise others to do the same if they don't have the tools, skills and experience which may be needed. I would therefore presume they do have those if embarking on such a build.
Statistics: Posted by hippy — Tue Jul 15, 2025 2:02 pm