mounted in closure

After I did some E2E tests, I mounted the board between the dimmer boards. I will go in details on the tests in one of next blogs. As you can see the board integrates seamlessly with the existing onces:

board finished

May I proudly present the final results of the board:

Total view

FTDI 2232H for serial debug

Lantronics matchport single chip solution for WIFI to serial convertion 

Ethernet cable connection

Antenna connection via U.FL and reverse-SMA

 Antenna mounting

Orange status leds

( MADE IN BELGIUM BY manes6969 at telenet dot be )

PCB ready

Today we received our brand new PCB and the result is nice, that can't be denied! Fine details and colors. The look is very professional. I like the originally V lay out of the status leds for instance. We accomplished a proper design with finding an ordered way for the components that looks not overwhelmed or busy at all. Moreover, care has been taken to respect the lay out of the existing boards in order to receive a fluent transient among them. I can't show this yet because the board must be fully ready to mount first. I think the pictures below speak for them self:

Full size:

Zoom in:

Next step is soldering the components. Of course I will post a few pictures on the progress. I will zoom in on the antenna connection and mounting because we never did a thing like that. So stay tuned for the next episode.


(Click on the picture to view in original size) 

final drawings

After two weeks the drawings reached their final state. So good news the pcb is in production as we speak. We tried to align the components as much as possible with the dimmer boards.

The schematics:

The pcb:

Next blog will cover the progress of soldering the components.

(All electronic schematics and pcb designed by manes6969@telenet.be)

PCB design

I needed a replacement for my USB2I2C convertor. Actually I wanted to work without a PC in the closet. I started some searches on the internet to find a suitable replacement. This brought me to the Lantronics site. They sell a fully made component that converts WIFI into serial. Exactly what I was looking for. See below the specifications:

Most of the components setup of my previous USB2I2C project can be reused on the new board. The only big differences are the board measurements and the Lantronics embedded wireless server module. I want the board to be as large as the dimmer boards so it will fit perfectly well between them. The look will be marvelous as the three boards will form one big black surface. All components and drilling holes will be at the same distance to accomplish maximum uniformity. A first drawing is already been made by my good friend after a few discussions between a couple of bears ;-) Below a first version of the layout:

As we continue the development I will write some more on how we progress. Maybe I'll insert a section on how to setup the Lantronics and I will cover a blog on how the performance will be over the air.