South West Makers

Hawk volunteered to design up the the conference badge and is based around the Nations Tech: N32L406 MCU, something like this: https://www.lcsc.com/product-detail/Microcontroller-Units-MCUs-MPUs-SOCs_Nations-Technologies-Inc-N32L406CBL7_C2981444.html This is a low power MCU and in fact the board ran...

I have now designed three SAO hat boards, so initially I designed my SAO Tester PCB with three SAO connectors. In the initial version of the Tester I had one socket configured with a MOSFET switchable power. I think that was so i could test the power side of things, but I never ended up using that f...

Since I was on a SAO Hat making mode, I thought I would have a go at making one for the Shenzhen based TroubleMaker makerspace and a koala for myself: TM_front-working.jpg koala-front.jpg I wanted the front side to be a clean as possible, so I used 0805 0 ohm resistors on the back side as track jump...

In June 2023 I was chatting with a friend about my idea to lead a tour of the electronics scene in Shenzhen China and he suggested that we make and assemble a PCB as part of the tour. Since a bunch of us where attending the tour I thought it would be fun to hold a KiCad conference as well. We decide...

I have been traveling a lot and luggage space is sometimes at a premium. A few years ago I purchased a smallish 240V temperature controlled soldering iron and that has been my handy travel companion. But I know I can go smaller. I recently purchased the Pinecil v2 USB-C based soldering iron and oh y...

I submitted the design to JLCPCB while I was recently in Shenzhen, China and a few days later I received the blank PCB. Luckily I was I had purchased a new hot plate for the November Asian KiCad Conference, so I could quickly assemble the board. While it pulsed, it didn't keep the Power Bank alive. ...

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 ...