Reddit:Electronics

Dreading placing those SMDs… I need a PnP 😭

After a lot of learning I finally designed and manufactured my own custom (working) PCB! it's an esp32s3 devboard, with as many sensors as you can think of: NFC, IMU, VOC, humidity/temperature, color/ambient light, magnetometer, microphone, speakers, sd card, I2C expansion. I'm a high school student, so this definitely took a lot of help from people who knew what they were doing, and two failed circuit boards before this lol.

Most recently I've used it for a rhythm game I made, where using the IMU let me make a beatsaber-style anime game of bad apple!

open source at https://github.com/darshg321/Ultisense

Thought this might be interesting to some of you.
This is the inside of a failed Fuji Electric 6MBI75SS-120 IGBT module (1200 V / 75 A).
It’s quite impressive to see the number of aluminum bonding wires used to connect the dies to the power terminals.
The module was already dead, so I decided to open it up rather than throw it away.

Wanted to try out these CH32V203 (144MHz RISC-V) chips for a while, so I've decided to make some nice USB gadgets for USB HID injection and just for studying the USB protocol. It has 2 leds and 4 captive touch buttons.

It fits nicely into a USB-A port and is very easy to carry around. And with it I've had tons of fun messing around with a bare-metal USB stack, and just in general learning the whole USB protocol.

It was really fun trying to make a bare-metal USB bootloader for this chip, but I've managed to fit everything in 2KiB. (Source here) For comparison the official bootloader is nearly 24KiB in size. As a bonus, I've also re-designed the V203 USB stack for ch32fun and sent in a pr :D

The PCB is also open source, check out the KiCAD files here: https://github.com/cheyao/comu (kicanvas)

I plan on just using them for HID injection and as a quick devboard when I need very few I/O pins (4 main ones, but I've exposed some more via testpoints)

(Name and form inspired by the *omu series)

thats the production file.

they didnt care.

for some reason you guys INSISTED they would charge me more and downvoted my replys (why??) but i tried it and it worked out fine

maybe still draw on some traces between the designs but other than that you can indeed combine pcbs into one stencil in jlcpcb

This is the film speed selector resistor PCB used in the Canon New Ql17 and QL17 G-III cameras (manufactured from 1969-1982). The construction of these is not that different from modern SMT thin-film chip resistors, with the main difference being that the termination is one-sided rather than wrapped around the edge of the ceramic substrate as it usually is now. They are approximately 2.5x1.2mm (0.1x0.05 inch). Later-production units of the same camera that I've worked on use the exact same design, but the size, placement, and soldering of the resistors tends to be more consistent.

This is the earliest use of surface-mount passive components that I have seen, in person or in photos, and it's likely among the first mass-produced consumer products to use surface-mount technology. The information available online about the history of surface-mount passive components is very spotty, but I was able to find what seems to be the first patent describing this style of thin-film resistor, from 1962 by an Italian inventor who apparently worked with Plessey in the UK. It's still unclear who was the first to actually commercialize surface-mount resistors - based on other patents from the time, thin-film resistor technology was well understood, but component manufacturers were largely focused on making through-hole parts, and patents for anything resembling modern surface-mount components would not start showing up until the 1970s. It would also be a while before SMT started appearing in more consumer products; even Canon's own A-series SLRs did not switch from through-hole to surface-mount passive components until the early 1980s.

i did combine 2 pcbs into one stencil but im not falling for this jlc

theyre probably gonna charge me extra or something

Today, I had an issue where I checkled under the sink and noticed that the waste disposal had a very slow leak.
After tightening the seal, I decided to implement a home made moisture sensor and warning system.
It essetially detects water by passing electricity throught the water to the gate of a mosfet, and then using that mosfet to pull current through a dedicated LED flashing chip.
A small test button is included, to test the battery works, though I do not anticipate the batteries draining very quickly.
As such, only zinc cells were implemented.

This has given me a good chance to put the dedicated LED flasher chip to good use.
After checking online, I think it's been discontinued.
I initially wanted to use a high brightness 5mm transparent red LED, but it wouldn't fit into place, so decided on a 3mm LED instead.

The LED can be changed by inserting it into the female wire ends.

As for the sensor itself, just a small square of stripboard with interleaved probe terminals.
Simple, but gets the job done.

All installed with tape and hot glue gun, for fast removal, if needed.
All mounted on a small peirce of card, for a quick and dirty job.

This is my first post documenting my transistor binary clock project. The goal is, to only use through hole transistors, diodes and passive components to form RTL or DTL logic. These logic elements should then divide the 50Hz mains into minutes and hours.

For this job, I designed T flip-flops, that can be reset. This would allow me to combine multiple T flip-flops and some logic, to count to any arbitrary number. The clock should then display this number using a few LEDs.

Today I achieved the first Milestone of this project, by soldering up the first PCB design and testing it. To my surprise, this design worked immediately! Now I am very happy with this first Layout :3

If I am done with this and I have documented everything, I am planning to open source the board and other files. No one would probably want to build a massive discrete transistor binary clock, that constantly draws 8 Watts, but whatever.

Now I can say: One PCB complete, 21 more to go...

The shelf is a 24 V tunable white strip driven by an off the shelf controller. At full brightness it made a high pitched wine. Dimmed to a usable level, it got even worse!

Scoping the original controller’s output showed it drives the LEDs with a 2 kHz H-bridge waveform, and dimming inserts 0 V dwell that pumps energy into the harmonics right where your ear is most sensitive. A mic 5 cm away confirmed it, a harmonic comb spaced at 1999 Hz, with the 4 kHz member 16 dB louder when dimmed.

The replacement is an STM32 driving a three level H-bridge at 25 kHz through a proper gate driver, BLE control, on a 4 layer board sized to drop into the original enclosure.

Every harmonic now lands above the audible band. Current draw came out the same as the original, so the silence was basically free. It also remembers brightness and colour through power cuts, the F303 has no EEPROM so state gets debounced into a flash page.

Full writeup with the scope captures, audio FFTs and design files: https://github.com/AShadyPCB/led-shelf-controller

Today’s fun SMD soldering rework under the microscope. Tossed the penny in there for scale 🤓

I found a project (the Loko Air) that uses a LoRa module to relay GPS data back to a central hub. My cat wouldn't like the footprint of the project as is (had an antenna sticking straight up), and I had difficulty buying the project off of Seeed studio anyway. I am a freshly graduated electrical engineer and I had not attempted a schematic since I have graduated.

So, with the original project's schematic in hand, I set out to make minor improvements like:

• Switching the monopole antenna to a dipole antenna. I figured it had next to no ground plane given its size. I also knew-ish that dipoles tended to form a donut radiation pattern and it would do decently. I am not confident in the 'balun' I made but I based it on stuff I found looking around online.
• I reduced the part count in quantity and variety. I tried to reduce the number of components needed and what remained I also tried using the same as elsewhere when applicable.
• In general I tried to base a lot of what I did more on the datasheets than the original designer ended up with. I may find out why the hard way later, but it has me going into the PCB level a bit more confident.

I don't particularly have the means to test this circuit before I order a PCB, but any feedback is more than welcome. I was mostly looking to find out if I made any major faux pas as far as the schematic is concerned. I would like it to be legible and friendly as I intend to upload it to github when I am complete and confident it at least kind of works.

So this is my discrete op amp i'm building that is going to act as error amplifier for a linear power supply i'm building, everything is going to be discrete and as low noise as possible by my hands. Why? Becouse I want to be able to say that it truly built it from scratch and to see how clean power i can get out of it.

I recently started playing drums with a small group of local hobbyist musicians (nothing extraordinary here guys just playing some covers and struggling to keep zombies by the cranberries at 75 BPM)

I’m 36 now I have been playing drums since I was nine, and zombies is one of those songs for everybody speeds up. And it’s not like we’re super professionals. The first metronome I made I plugged into the audio and everybody bitched that it was too loud and hurting their ears. So I made one with lights and a buzzer so we can use it to count off and watch it from across the room. It also serves a HTML page with a metronome swinging back-and-forth to the tempo

https://github.com/WillyV3/metronome-2

I started with a much more complicated design using esp32 wroom, 18650 battery and charging module , along with volume pot - but after everything was wired the metronome only faintly worked when I shorted two outgoing data wires. since i was about 10 hours into soldering it and had learned a lot - I decided to pivot, simplify, and get something shipped to bring to band practice.

I opened an old rechargeable emergency light to see how it was designed. It was interesting to see the battery pack, LED arrays, charging board, and wiring all integrated into such a compact enclosure. I thought others here might find the internal layout interesting as well. Any observations about the design are welcome.

For the final project of my Embedded Electronics Engineering Bachelor I built a fully capable audio player. I did all of the research, schematic, layout and software by myself. I had a friend helping me design the case and 3D print it.

I'm honestly really proud of what I accomplished ! I had around 3.5 months to do it and it was really stressfull haha

Here are the specs :

• ESP32 module
• 3.5 mm jack wired output
• Bluetooth connectivity
• Supports audio files up to 24 bits at 192 kHz
• Support .MP3 and .WAV files
• -94.7 dB of THD+N at 1 kHz
• 106,2 dB of SNR
• More than 9 hours of listening time with a 950 mAh battery
• Safe battery charging circuit

I'll be happy to answer any questions you have !