Warning: Learning how to design PCBs can be habit-forming (hehe)!

It is ridiculously cheap to get say, 5 boards made and fully assembled at a place like JLCPCB. However, due to the chip shortage a lot of components like microcontrollers have stock that comes and goes. I recommend checking the PCB manufacturer's inventory (e.g. https://jlcpcb.com/parts/) before designing anything because there's nothing more annoying than spending hours making a PCB and then finding out you can't get it assembled because some part you chose is out of stock.

You'll probably also want to regularly check the inventory of the parts you're using while you're in the design process (if it takes more than a few days) because it happens quite frequently that a part with say, 3000 in stock suddenly drops to under 1000 and then to 0 over the course of a few days.

I highly recommend getting into PCB design. It's super rewarding (and satisfying/zen connecting traces) and it's easier than you'd think. I say, "it's like the adult version of connect-the-dots."

Thanks. I'll give it a look!

You can sketch out your board in KiCad [0] and export it as a gerber that you can send to a printing service. CERN uses it now, so it's worth learning, as it'll only improve over time. As for PCB shops, I'd start with comparing [1] [2] and [3], and seeing which has the best price for your needs. Generally, just searching reddit for "PCB prototype manufacturer" will get you a couple decent options. It really depends on how complicated your design is and how big of a run you need.

[0] https://www.kicad.org/ [1] https://www.pcbway.com/ [2] https://jlcpcb.com/ [3] https://oshpark.com/

This was very clearly mentioned in the article, the project was even sponsored by the board fab used (PCBWay). There are others, and prices for entry-level hobbyist-size boards are low.

Two freely available software options to Goog are KiCAD and EasyEDA.