South West Makers

Visited the Penang Science Cluster Makerspace recently and was fortunate to be able to spend three weeks working there on a few projects, one being my USB Power Profiler PCB but mostly working on the software side. Had lots of fun with the latest v0.8 version of the board: 2023-09-10_09-34-50_sml.1....

It can be infuriating when trying to use a Power Bank battery pack to run small things that don't use much power. I have four phone charger power banks and they all need 40-50mA of load to keep them running, otherwise they turn off. The turn off times range from 5, 30 and 40 seconds. The 5 second on...

Yay, the board almost worked straight off the hot-plate. But there was a hidden short between the USB-Micro USB- pin and shield. It took a few attempts with the soldering iron turned up to 410 degrees and lots of flux to clear that one. NameBadge_v0.11_PCB.jpg As I mentioned in the last post, I chan...

PCB version 0.10. All the sensors on the board turned out ok. I somehow fixed the SK6812 footprint - but then I must have reverted (CTL+Z) it back to the old footprint and I didn't notice. Ouch! I have coded up the LIS2 3Dof accelerometer so that the display text will be the correct way up to match ...

Yes, yet another SW Maker soldering practice PCB. This one is based around the 'Simon Says' game, in which you attempt to press a sequence of buttons following the computers pattern. It's a mixture of thru-hole and 0805 SMD parts and can be powered via a 3V CR2032 battery, or a USB Micro cable. This...

I am working on a project that requires strips of 12V white LEDs. This all has to run from a phone charger battery pack. The initial strip I tried using had 60 white LEDs on it. Turns out it needs 1A at 12V to run the strip of white LEDs. But this requires 4+A at 5V to be fed into a XL6019 based Boo...

I needed a small compact single motor controller board that could control a small 5V motor backward and forwards, so I quickly designed up this PCB, based around a DRV8830 i2C motor driver IC: Single-motor-driver_v0.5-sml.jpg There is a magnetic buzzer, OLED display connector, 4 RGB (bling) LEDs and...

Ok, the mag sensor didn't make it onto the next design version, but I did add a voltage divider that measures the voltage on the RGB LED string. If the MOSFET sending power to the LED string is switched off, then I should read 0 volts on the RGB LED string, but low and behold, I still measure a redu...

For this version, I ditched the ESP32-Pico MCU, and used the ESP32-S3-Mini. This comes with a built in UART, so it saves me having to add on a CP2102 UART and the cost of it. While it's easier to mount correctly, it's still a bit tricky, in that the pads are all hidden underneath, so the fix for an ...

Well, this project has been a long journey and been a lot of fun. The Purple v0.8, was tricky to get going properly due to the hand assembled ESP32-Pico MCU. It worked for a few months, then I took it along to the 2022 Bunbury Science Fair and it got zapped by one of the thousands of people that tou...

Another lovely component sample board:
The DFN1006 and SOT-883 are very small and fiddly to get into place. I think the SIT-883 has a large pad size, so maybe better to use than a DFN1006?

JLCPCB where kind and sent me six of these small PCB's. It didn't take long to assemble two of them and they all work fine. I think if I did another version, I would place the GND pin in the middle, so the pin out would be: 5V - GND - 3.3V That way I could just solder two pins if I only needed one s...

The other day I wanted to do a quick breadboard circuit test and I needed to get 5V and 3.3V onto the circuit. I have a nice RPi based Hat that could be used to inject power to the breadboard, but it's a monster and I thought all I need is a simple small PCB. So I spent a few hours to make my own on...

Over time, my boards have become more dense, as I learn more and try to make things smaller. I started with SOT-23 sized generic MOSFETs and over time have purchased smaller and smaller MOSFETs, with last year getting down to DFN1006 (1mm x 0.6mm) sized components. I place them on the solder pasted ...

I was always a bit mystified about PDM MEMS microphones. I had a chance to use one that talks over the i2S bus when I helped design up the version 0.4 of the Open Source Smart Glasses PCB URL: https://github.com/TeamOpenSmartGlasses/OpenSourceSmartGlasses/tree/main/electronics_and_firmware/OSSG_v0p4...

This is a tiny breakout board for the MT6701 360 degree magnetic rotation field sensor IC. It has a small JST-SH connector for the power and i2C pins. This seems to work really well, and will be used in an up coming project. Unfortunately, it seems the tap function (senses a sudden increase if magne...

It didn't take long to whip this PCB up. Just a breakout for the cheapish QMC5883 digital compass IC. I was very happy with the consistent compass heading readings I got from it, so I am now putting the IC into some of my other projects: QMC5883L_sml.jpg I can use either a 1mm pin JST-SH SMD connect...

I am really happy with this version of the PCB. This was (at the time), the first JLCPCB US$2 for 5 PCBs special on 6 layer PCB, with ENIG (gold) finish and via's filled with epoxy and plated, so it has a very smooth finish. I love it - well done JLCPCB! SE_v0.8-front_sml.jpg And here it is with all...

Well this version of thew board turned out to be quite usable. There are still two errors with the design: 1. kind of small, but I have two voltage dividers, one to measure the input voltage and the other to measure the output voltage. They are switched, so as not to load down the USB line, or at le...

This version of the RGB (WS2812) LED Controller even smaller, just 35mm x 26mm. It has the same ambient light simple photo transistor sensor as the 2-Port board, but the RGB power output is switched via a MOSFET. This means I can isolate the boards power from the RGB light strip and run the strip vi...