XMAS Tree

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parkview
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XMAS Tree

Post by parkview » Sat Jan 01, 2022 10:17 pm

Back in October school holidays my granddaughter and I set out to create a Xmas Tree on a small 10cm high green PCB. The new Espressif ESP32-C3 had been announced earlier in the year, so I thought that with the price of electronic parts going through the roof, maybe I could try using this cheap new part. The ESP32-C3-WROOM-02 was listed on MOUSER for a November release , so I thought I was covered. Unfortunately I was perhaps a bit hasty in that choice of MCU, as it's still not listed on LCSC, and the Mouser price was terrible. I did manage to pick up a few via Aliexpress. Interestingly Espressif don't seem to list Errata sheets for their parts - at least not on the main documentation site. Turns out the 02 part was a beta release and I have seen mention that it's a nearly full two pages long, including a bug in the USB UART programming mode, which I had designed the board around. All fixable with some bodge wiring and cut traces, which means time for a second version of the PCB:
xmas-tree-V1.0.jpg
xmas-tree-V1.0.jpg (24.05 KiB) Viewed 11961 times
Backside:
xmas-tree-V1.0_back.jpg
xmas-tree-V1.0_back.jpg (47.79 KiB) Viewed 11961 times
I am taking no chances here and will load the program via a 1.27mm three pin pogo clip that I just purchased from AE. My design will allow me to easily add bodge wires to the USB connector to test out a spare PCB with the ESP32-C3-WROOM-03 when it's released.

Oh, and another interesting factoid, the Arduino ESP-C3 board hasn't been released for PlatformIO yet. Currently it's only available only in the Beta Arduino V2.0 IDE. So, it was time to start learning the Espressif ESP-IDF via PlatformIO. That's kept me busy for a few days learning the differences. I did end up with lots of blinking LEDs, and ESP32 LEDC Fades via FreeRTOS Tasks etc. Very nice.

Nice to get the revised Xmas Tree PCB design off to JLCPCB on the 1st day of the year. You never know, maybe this might turn into a KiCAD workshop later in the year :-)

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