Status of this project?

[P0rkR0ll]

Did you get this PCB made? Do you need any more eyes lookin over it?

I'm trying to get one of these installed in my truck :)

[jharvey]

@P0rkR0ll I have not made this yet :( I've become distracted with other projects. What's your project? Perhaps I can get this to a point were it can be prototyped. I've got 2 kids 13 and 15 yr old. My time to do the physical prototype is limited, but I can often do design stuff after the family has gone to sleep. What is your level of electrical knowledge? I'd be happy for an extra set of eyes.

[P0rkR0ll]

Haha, i know how that goes, I am in a VERY similar boat. I have lots of experience laying out power supply PCB's and doing all heat calcs, and decades of mechanical CAD experience. I'm really good at following reference designs haha. I'm interested in this project because it looks like a lot of the real hard stuff with sch and firmware control logic is mostly done, and I wanna take it and wrap it up in a cool package. I've been looking for an excuse to make a project where the PCB is the enclosure, with capacitive touch buttons, and something better than a 4x20 display from the radio shack kit i had as a kid. OLED screens are cheap and way cooler. I have a buddy with loads of exp designing crazy power supplies, and he said the original circuit and code was good, he even bought some PCBs but never put them together. I want this because it is kinda a swiss army knife of a DC-DC converter, which would be really handy for some of my other projects. So I can ask my bud to look over what you got, compare it to the original, and then I can work some magic on it. I might try to figure out how to add 20w USBC-PD charger to the original design, to make it more handy

[jharvey]

My longer term goal with this project was to put an entire inverter setup on the backside of a solar panel, including a battery, pure sine wave 120VAC and potentially a cooling fan or hot water pipe. See my efforts and slow progress here. https://github.com/jharvey/Solar_Kit

My vision for that project is for the solar panels to sit in the garage, then when power goes, I roll out one or multiple panels with 2 wheels attached. The panels would also have a handle, which doubles as a prop rod. So I roll it into the yard, kick out a built in prop rod, and plug in devices. Excess energy is stored in a lead acid battery. I was looking at lead acid as it's heavy, which is handy and helps prevent the panel from blowing over or something like that. I was also planning that if you plug in multiple of these panels into each other, they identify each other and sync. So more panels means more power. The solar kit is very much still a work in progress. It's also an off shoot of this project.

I like the idea of using the PCB as a part of the enclosure, or perhaps even use it as the entire enclosure. I also like OLED's. This used the older school LCD as I think the code is already written that way. I personally would prefer an e-ink display. The refresh rates are not critical and I see no need to burn extra energy. I know the LCD is small energy, but if I'm using it when power is out, small energy is still a concern.

[P0rkR0ll]

RE OLED screen- I like them because they are like $1.50. Its not a problem to put another free capactitive touch button down to wake up display and have it time out after 30s, this is code I can actually write myself

[jharvey]

It seems you are driven by low cost. I'm typically driven by a certain level of quality or set of features then low cost after that. I tend to like push buttons which require some mechanical strength to activate them. Cap sense can get false triggers and if you were not present to observer, then you don't know if a cat brushed up against it, or if it was some stray RF noise. In most situations I tend to prefer the extra couple pennies to avoid these types of electrical issues.

You mention you're good at following reference designs. I'm guessing you are Asian. I'm also guessing your interested in cost because you are looking to produce an item for sale. If that is correct I want to note that I am OK with this. I would likely be a customer if they came up for sale. I've helped other projects like rusEFI do that. He sells PCB designs I've designed. I'm happy that he is been able to do great things with my contribution.

I've got a 3 day weekend starting. I might start a branch with an OLED. I agree those are nicer and I expect they will be around forever. I'm not sure how you get free cap sense. Are there pins on the ESP32 which I should avoid if possible? If I know the potential use of them, I can avoid those pins to prevent future issues.

[P0rkR0ll]

Haha, i'm actually an old white dude living in USA that likes pork roll egg and cheese sandwiches. I do have a lot of experience bringing dozens of products to store shelves and working in and with China. I wasn't actually looking to make a product out of this (at least not one that makes me money), I really just want a swiss army knife DC-DC converter in a nice package, because it would be super handy, and an excuse to sink way too much time into cool enclosure design

RE cap touch: I'm not 100% sold on this, I just think it looks cool, and cheaper\easier to make a drip\splash resistant enclosure design. I've done it with Atmel MCU's in the past, I didn't think ahead far enough to remember this was ESP based haha. I might consider using a dedicated touch controller, which is better for handing issues you describe anyways. Code also helps, things like requiring long touches to 'wake up' the touch pad to avoid accidental touch, that kind of thing. Basically the same thing you'd do with buttons

If I were to add cost to this PCB, my pref would be towards overrating heatsink to eliminate need for fan, water resistant wire connections, external ESP antenna. E-ink is super cool, but super expensive, I haven't found many projects to justify the cost of them. The board can be made so user can pick whatever display they want and solder it in. Bringing it back to OLED display, the question i'm wondering is, do I design it to use an OTS aliexpress module that has .1" header, or get the raw display and solder the ribbon cable down?

The big black square in your pics, is that the 12v DC-DC isolation converter? Can we use smaller ones of those? I've used ones like this and laid them on their backs so they are not tall off the PCB: https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/mornsun-america-llc/B1212S-1WR3/13968708

[jharvey]

Black box is a transformer. The original design was a hand wound a transformer. I designed with a purchased one from digikey.

I'm also an old white born and breed merica. Or al least my teenage kids call me old :)

Do you have a time line for when you want your swiss army knife? What increments are needed before ordering the first proto?

[jharvey]

@P0rkR0ll Do you have a time line for when you want to build this? Would you be interested in spinning this board? Would you like me to make changes or do you want to fork and clone your own repo to make the changes?

[P0rkR0ll]

hey bud, i'm not on here that much either. I have a bunch of family visiting too so i'm a little tied up with that. TBH, I have a freelancer dude that i've used many times, and I might just pay him to lay out the PCB. I have a lot of comments to your responses written up already, i'll post it when I get a min. And perhaps, keep the convo on git so everyone else can see our thought process