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

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/ 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."