South West Makers

Recently I was doing some work from a hotel room for a few days. I was trying to figure out how to get Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) working on a very cheap CH32V003 microprocessor. I didn't have any LEDs with me, so it was difficult to see what was going on. I ended up trying to use a multimeter to measure the output frequency as an indication that I was outputting PWM and then measuring the average output voltage to try and detect the varying duty cycle. What a pain to try and upload code, press buttons, while holding multimeter probes in place!

I therefore resolved to assemble a simple LED+switch board when I got back to work. Which is the first thing I did a few days later: I was half way through soldering it up when I mentally kicked myself, as I really should be designing up a SMD PCB for this. It sure would look a lot nicer and be smaller to boot. That evening I designed up a simple board that has 3 plain LEDs, 3 RGB LEDs and two tactile switches. As I was in Shenzhen, I had five of the bare boards back within three days. I laser cut an acrylic stencil and quickly assembled a couple of the boards. I think it turned out really well and it's going into my travel kit as it is very handy and much easier to use than a multimeter.