Flukebox

I finished the design of the Flukebox V1.0! I added rivets to the inside of the lid to hold it in place, and I added holes for the buttons and switches and encoders well. I exported my gerber files and got a quote from PCBWay: it only costs $6.14 per PCB, which isn’t as bad as I thought. I got my repository in order and now I’m ready to ship for funding! Wish me luck!

I started CADing the Flukebox! I exported a 3D model of the PCB and imported a bunch of the parts. Unfortunately, I can’t find exact models for some of them, and I’ll have to model them myself. Additionally, it seems the pads I intended to solder the ESP-WROOM-32 onto aren’t rendered, and I’ll have to sort of eyeball its location.

I tried wiring the Flukebox together a few times, but none of them were satisfactory. I had to use too many Vias and lots of my routes ran unnecessarily long. I’ll try rearranging the parts to make wiring more efficient. I’ll try to move the OLED into the center while doing so, as I believe this will achieve a better look.

I finished the schematic of the PCB of the Flukebox! I finalized the parts I will be using, and I created footprints/symbols for them. I wired everything up, and I’m now ready to put it together in the PCB editor! Seeing all the wiring now, I may have to use three layers. I’ll try to keep it low, though!

I drew all the symbols and started putting everthing together in the schematic editor! So far I’m done with the GND and VCC connections. I have to use a pinout sheet because I’m using a bare ESP32 module. I hope that I won’t have to make this a 3-layer PCB, even though I think that 2-layer is practically inevitable.

I designed the rest of the components’ footprints! It was annoying to find the dimensions of the actual PCBs of the modules for most of them, but I got it done.

I designed the footprint for a 128x64 OLED. Since I need components like these but don’t want to buy bare components on account of my poor soldering skills, I plan to attach them onto the PCB using only the long sides of pin headers. That means I need 1mm holes at 2.54mm pitch for these components, of which no footprints currently exist. I’ll be making more of them myself.

I researched parts to use in the Flukebox! It’s gonna be another open source music player. I couldn’t find lots of single-unit parts on Amazon, and LCSC’s shipping was too expensive, but I hope that the hardware grant I’m hoping to get will cover most of my expenditures.