Elecrow PCB’s Recently Elecrow provided the offer of $10 USD towards pcbs (Which can get one 5x5cm PCB shipped for free). The catch for this was to provide a review of the PCB and their service. I ordered two PCBs from this voucher, a yellow PCB that acts as an XT30 joiner board for setting up paralell connections between 3S batteries, and, a black PCB that is the top pcb on the openBMS project I’m slowly moving along on HackADay.io. ...
Review The ES1006 is a tiny (really tiny) barcode scanner module available online from the usual places. The unit supports operating as a USB keyboard, and a UART output for the scanned barcodes. Pinout Pin Name Dir Description 1 NC Input BOOT0 - Used to enter bootloader 2 VCC Input 5V Power Input (3.3V LDO onboard) 3 GND Input Ground 4 Rx Input Serial Rx - 9600 Baud 5 Tx Output Serial Tx - 9600 Baud 6 USB D- I/O USB D- 7 USB D+ I/O USB D+ 8 NC Input SWCLK (PA14) 9 BUZZ Output Signal for Buzzer, 2Khz,150ms after scan done 10 LED Output Signal for LED,on for 650ms after scan done 11 NC I/O SWDIO - PA13 12 TRIG Input Scan trigger, active low
Review The TS100 is possibly the best soldering iron I have used for under $200. It is very lightweight and portable, runs off a wide range of power sources and has full PID temperature control built in. The built in accelerometer provides a protective sleep mode to prolong the length of your tip. With the 65W power rating, it heats to 360 Celsius in under 8 Seconds. Main Features 65W rated output (24V Input). Interchangeable Tips (<$10 Each). Accelerometer puts the unit to sleep automatically Runs excellently off LiPo Batteries in the field (Drill or Quadcopter or Car Battery). Also runs off most Laptop power supplies that you have around. Solid construction, fairly tolerant of being thrown in a field bag. Open Source Firmware allows feature additions. TS100 by Miniware firmware Over seven months ago I wrote about the new to me TS100 soldering iron, which I started a fork of the firmware for. Over this period both the firmware, I initially wrote to provide a menu system for configuration has evolved to provide more and more features at the request of users. Miniware have now released the 2017 update to their offical firmware which adds a nice menu system to the iron as well! So both are worth checking out. ...
This is a public release of this design, created in KiCad. This board will plug on top of a Pi Zero and provide 3 SD cards (1x SDIO, 2x SPI) and an audio output DAC with headphone driver. This was originally designed for a prototype Audio player / streaming setup. This is a cutdown version omitting some power and misc components that are no longer required. The board could be re-routed to be smaller, however I feel releasing the tested version is a better idea. ...
Notes of setting up SeaFile under docker on Ubuntu Server 16.04 LTS I have recently started using SeaFile to provide an easy method of centralized file storage. Trying the normal install with the installation script kept failing (Appears to not support latest version). As I am aiming for an easy install for others I looked to the docker based image. I use docker for packaging up other servers I often use, so this seems like a natural and easy way to work. ...
AFE for BMS Design 2 - Schematic Capture In part one of this series I looked at the inital concept of what an AFE is and a basic outline. In the previous post I presented the follow ideas for the design of the system : 9-15S LiPo battery (BQ76940) 100mA balance current 40A continuous duty current shunt, 50A peak PCB area less than 10x10cm panel LED SOC indication Ability to communicate to an external display to show detailed information Temperature sensing inside the battery pack Track the health of the pack Looking at this design, I selected to use a companion controller to work with the AFE for the inital design of this BMS. This is not technically required, and if you wish to impliment your own the schematic is almost identical except swapping the companion controller out for your selected device. ...
Getting Started with AFE’s for BMS design. Analog Front End IC’s are becoming more popular from major IC manufacturers. These chips are designed to wrap all the analogue circuitry required for the design and operation of a BMS system up into a small package. Reducing design and programming time for the designer(s). This forfill a useful segment of the market where the application may want different design parameters to a normal BMS design, or even just for learning the operation modes of a BMS. Texas Instruments makes a series of chips in the BQ769x0 line. These 3 forms of the chip cover usage cases for 3 to 15 series cells in the battery pack. However other manufacturers have created similar devices. Some, like TI, integrate the ADC and voltage reference on the same IC. For other brands a separate external ADC is required, this allows for higher accuracy at the cost of increased circuit complexity. ...
LiPro PCB LiPro Micro The LiPro Micro provides state of charge monitoring, passive balancing and safety discharge for lithium batteries. The key benefit to utilising the LiPro Micro on your battery pack is the high accuracy balancing of the internal cells, prolonging the life of the battery. The key features of the LiPro Micro: State of Charge display (Based on cell voltage curve) Cell balancing (to within 5mV total error) Safety discharge after 7 days idle If pack sits at a high voltage for a long period of time the unit will discharge the pack down to a safer voltage level to prevent cell damage Very low power usage. (<100uA) Designed for LiPo and LiFePo4 (LiPo 4.1/4.2/4.3/4.35/4.4V & LiFePo4 3.6v) – Default profile supports most LiPo packs – Different curves can be selected to suit the connected pack – 3-5 Series cells supported (solder bridges on the back to select cell count) Operation Connect the small PCB to your battery’s balance plug. The board comes with a JST connector populated, this is normally a 3S but 3,4 or 5 is available on request. This is also very easy to change if you are used to soldering. ...
WARNING If you are planning to use the SPI method on a raspberry pi 1, compute module 1 or a pi zero, please read the extra instructions at the end of the page. These devices require a driver patch & kernel rebuild. (Its not hard, just slow). Secondary SD For one of my upcoming projects featuring a raspberry pi zero, extra internal storage is required and I wanted to keep the USB port free for connecting as a OTG connection. ...
The time has come that I finally need to look into getting SD cards to work with the stm32. Looking online there seems to be a few really great resources for connecting to a SD card over spi from a smaller lower power however I could not find any guides for the STM32 line of chips. I am currently working using the HAL libraries as this allows for flexibility in working with different chips (in theory!). This does come at a cost of performance, however I have found the cost to be fairly low compared to being able to have already setup functions for most things. ...