submitted for funding already. my bom had a lot of holes for some reason (i think i know who to blame), but i fixed it and finally got to submit it for review. now gotta wait. and also make new projects bc i CANNOT lose that sticky streak. also made a really basic interference fit case that just exposes the terminals so ye.

Exported the gerbers, got the quote, did most of the BOM, made the readme better, blah blah blah. Next step now is to make a proper case for this thing in CAD. Lwk also procrastinated on my hw for this but like who cares right?

The PCB is finally done. Sorta got confused, a lot, especially with just the capacitors required to filter and smooth out stuff. But I did it, and now I just have to worry if the buck converter is gonna work at all. Other than that though, all I have to do now is pretty much just setup the github, design a case, and submit it for review!

I personally also really enjoy how this looks for some reason, as its the first proper non-3d printed PCB project that uses an esp32, which I am excited to get to learn more about.

I mostly just did basic cleanup, but upon verifying my schematic I realized that what I thought were mosfets (TIP41C) were actually not, causing them to produce much more heat than a mosfet would. Currently, I am in the process of determining a replacement, and retrofitting it into my current schematic/board.

Home Assistant Compatible LED Driver Board

I’ve been wanting something like this for a bit now, as I’ve just fallen into the world of Home Assistant, and ESPHome, and doing something like this seems like a much better way to control my lights than using a crappy 3d printed pcb with a buck converter hot glued to it.

For my microcontroller, I chose the ESP32-C3-WROOM, because 1. the c3 is pretty cheap and abundant, 2. the WROOM version has castellated pads, which make it much easier to hand-solder, and 3. it is SMD mounted, compared to using a through hole esp uc.

I’ve designed this PCB to have screw terminals for all power related I/O’s, and I’ve exposed every IO pin from the ESP32 to female headers for other miscellaneous dev projects. Due to complexities with installing a USB port, programming this board does require a UART to USB adapter, however it shouldn’t be that big of a problem due to ESPHome’s very convenient OTA updating feature.

I’ve added 4 mosfets to drive 4 non-addressable led channels, and another terminal has outputs for addressable leds. I plan on the final product being powered over USB PD with a cheap trigger board.