After creating three successful Shitty-Add-Ons/Simple-Add-Ons (SAOs) in my electronics journey, I figured it was time to get my knowledge and resources placed in a centralized location! Here is your one-stop-shop for the knowledge required to make your own SAO!
PCB Design and Basics
I highly recommend KiCad, it has been amazing to work with for all three SAOs and for creating your own symbols/footprints. The course below teaches some of the basics for Ki-Cad and the overall design process: https://contextualelectronics.com/courses/getting-to-blinky-5-0/
How to Learn PCB Design: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aODkA2mrimQ
Quick video for designing a PCB with SMD LEDs: https://youtu.be/hr1gUTix3_M
Full Tutorial for KiCad and STM32 PCB Design: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVUqaB0IMh4
Video format similar to the talk I gave at The Neon Temple: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfGuJ5nTeVw
SAO Specific Information
Overall blog discussing the OG SAO “standard”: https://hackaday.com/2019/03/20/introducing-the-shitty-add-on-v1-69bis-standard/
Overall blog discussing the “new” SAO header “standard”: https://hackaday.io/project/175182-simple-add-ons-sao
Link to the SAO footprints: SAO Footprints
Presentation showing the creation of a SAO (similar to my talk presented at the Neon Temple): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVHRHjuNklY
Blog of various SAOs & badges: https://blog.badgepirates.com/
Artwork Tools / Guides
A Guide to Artistic PCBs: https://www.instructables.com/A-Guide-Artistic-PCBs/
Inkscape SVG to Footprints: https://github.com/badgeek/svg2shenzhen
Affinity Designer SVG to Footprints / PCB: https://github.com/wntrblm/Gingerbread
TwinkleTwinkie’s presentation on understanding and making PCB art: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sbkvza8cKQE
TwinkleTwinkie’s color palette that is typically used for PCB art: https://youtu.be/Sbkvza8cKQE?t=1906
With my personal experience, utilizing Affinity Designer and Gingerbread has been a very straightforward process on getting SVGs converted into a format that was super easy to import into KiCad. It has my seal of approval!
Good luck on your electronics journey! I hope this post provided valuable resources to make this hobby more accessible!