About the đź’ˇ Deep dives category

🎓 Best Practices 💡 Deep dives
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Tldr; The Deep Dives category is our home for in-depth, educational guides on hardware design. This is where you unpack a topic properly, share how to think about it, and give others tools they can use across many projects. Accepted Deep Dives are rewarded with 50 € AISLER Store Credit. This is a moderated category: every post is reviewed by our team before it goes live.

What are Deep Dives?

Deep Dives are long-form posts for anyone who wants to go beyond “here’s a quick fix” and instead explain:

“Here’s how this works, why it matters, and how to make better design decisions around it.”

They are less about one specific circuit, and more about:

  • Concepts and principles

  • Typical problems and trade-offs

  • Practical rules of thumb that apply to many designs

Typical Deep Dive topics might include things like:

  • Making a BOM more robust, cheaper and easier to assemble

  • Choosing sensible trace widths for signals and power

  • Picking passive sizes with manufacturability and reliability in mind

  • Avoiding sourcing traps (exotic packages, overspecified parts, etc.)

If the goal is to help others understand and think better, it belongs here.

What should a Deep Dive include?

There is plenty of room for personal style, but most great Deep Dives share a similar structure.

1. Who is this for?

A short note at the top helps readers find the right content:

  • “This guide is for beginners…”

  • “This article is aimed at intermediate designers…”

Just one or two sentences is enough.

2. Introduction – why this matters

Start by setting the scene:

  • What is the topic?

  • Why is it important in real hardware projects?

    • Cost, manufacturing, reliability, debugging effort, availability, and so on.

By the end of the introduction, readers should know what they’ll learn and why they should care.

3. Typical problems and pitfalls

Next, highlight what often goes wrong. For example:

  • Too many different component variants on a BOM

  • Using the smallest possible passives without a strong reason

  • Relying on unusual packages that are hard to source

  • Choosing trace widths that look fine in CAD but are awkward to manufacture

Lists work well here. This section helps readers recognise their own habits and patterns.

4. Background concepts and theory

This is the heart of the Deep Dive: the “why” behind the topic.

Here you might:

  • Explain key concepts in plain language

  • Use analogies to make ideas intuitive

  • Introduce simple diagrams, tables or screenshots to support your points

The goal is to make the topic approachable but not superficial. Enough depth to be genuinely useful, without turning into a dry textbook.

5. Practical guidelines and rules of thumb

This is where understanding becomes action.

Good Deep Dives include:

  • Suggested default choices (e.g. “For general-purpose signal traces, a width of … is a good starting point.”)

  • Rules of thumb that can be reused in many projects

  • Simple decision frameworks, e.g.:

    • When generic parts are fine, and when specific parts are needed

    • When to accept higher part count, and when to consolidate values

    • When it’s worth paying for a better package, and when it’s overkill

Readers should come away with guidance they can apply the very next time they open their EDA tool.

6. Examples and mini case studies

Deep Dives are not tied to a single design, but concrete examples make them much easier to follow.

Examples might show:

  • How applying a rule of thumb changes a BOM

  • How a trace-width calculator is used with realistic currents and temperatures

  • How a datasheet recommendation supports a more general design guideline

These examples are there to demonstrate thinking, not to dictate one specific design.

7. Summary and key takeaways

End with a short recap, ideally in a handful of bullet points:

  • The most important ideas

  • The key mistakes to avoid

  • The main rules or checks to remember

Think of this section as a quick reference that readers can come back to later.

Moderation, rewards and review time

The Deep Dives category is moderated.

That means:

  • Every Deep Dive is read by the AISLER team before it goes live

  • We check:

    • Is the topic a good fit for Deep Dives?

    • Is the post structured and understandable?

    • Does it teach something useful beyond a quick tip?

    • Does it appear to be original work?

Store Credit

  • Accepted Deep Dives receive 50 € AISLER Store Credit

  • The aim is to review all submissions within 5 working days

  • If anything is unclear or we have questions, we’ll get in touch via:
    developer-relations@aisler.net

If an e-mail from that address appears in the inbox, that’s us following up on the submission.

Originality, plagiarism and featuring your work

To keep the content fair and genuinely helpful:

  • Plagiarised posts will not be accepted.

    • No copy-pasting from manufacturer appnotes, blogs or other websites

    • No reposting content written by someone else without clear permission

  • Short quotes and screenshots from datasheets, tools or standards are fine if:

    • They are clearly marked as such

    • The original source is referenced

By submitting a Deep Dive, authors confirm that:

  • They hold the rights to the text and images, or have permission to use them

  • AISLER may:

    • publish the Deep Dive in the forum

    • feature it on social media

    • highlight it in newsletters or other communication

In all cases, credit will be given to the original author (name or username).

Deep Dives are the place for the explanations that normally live in long chats, late-night debugging sessions and whiteboard sketches. Turning that knowledge into a post makes life easier for thousands of other hardware designers and now it also comes with 50 € in Store Credit as a thank you. :orange_heart: