Surprisingly not CR*P - Vibing hardware - Hey folks! In my latest adventure, we're taking a break from the vibe-coding game and diving straight into some hardware magic. Get ready as we haphazardly (but enthusiastically!) piece together components, hunt for missing wires and rogue capacitors, and finally emerge victorious with our very own PCB board. Shoutout to PCBWay for keeping the good vibes and great circuits flowing!

How Good Are My USB Cables? - In this video, I engage in a deeper exploration of USB testing, encountering a range of trials and tribulations along the way. First up, I attempt to test a couple of USB cables and discuss their data lines' peculiar situatedness. Then, I delve into the assembly of the PCB boards, sourced from PCBWay, which surely turned into a learning voyage than an easy sail. The first version faced challenges of misordered large-frame stencil, unseen connection problems, and even DRC errors in the submission process. Not dwell on that, I redesign and bring to table Version 2, complete with USB connectors with broken-out pins and designed for visual inspection ease. Although this version demonstrated success, soldering difficulties and bad connections persisted. Considering all the hurdles, I decide to let PCBWay handle the assembly for the next version. For future strategies, adding test points and eliminating the lithium-ion charging circuit seemed more practically viable. Peeping into version 3, testing points for all USB cable pins have been added and even an option to break out actual USB connections, all towards ensuring an improved error checking and usefulness of the assembly.

PCB Mistake Turns into Vacuum Stencil Experiment | MHP30 Hotplate Test - Learn how to recover from a mistaken chip order and improve SMD soldering techniques using a mini hotplate and vacuum cleaner stencil holder. Watch the mesmerizing results under the microscope!

Crowd Funding Success? I must be rich! - My ESP32 Rainbow has shipped out to all the backers! In this video, I dive into a retro of the crowd funding experience. Was it successful? You be the judge! I'll cover everything from total revenue, costs, and gross profit to the tricky world of tariffs and certification. I'll also discuss the pros and cons of using Crowd Supply. There's a bit of excitement and a bit of OMG - we're certifiable! Want to support the channel or grab an ESP32 Rainbow for yourself? Links are scattered throughout the video! And don't forget to join our vibrant community on Discord and newsletter platforms.

Printing PCBs At Home! - In today's captivating episode, I take a shot at home printed PCBs rather than buying from our faithful PCBWay, leading to some riveting discoveries. Using a stunning Voltera machine, my single-sided print echoed a glistening marshmallow-like texture that was cured just lovely in the oven. Encountering limitations, such as weak conductive ink bonds and layout tricks, brought on new challenges but also widened my horizon for potential improvements, such as considering a direct USB connection experiment. Despite issues, our creation came to life through intriguing stages of soldering, placement, and reflow, resulting in a successful quick prototype with operational LEDs and programmable features! Our exploration does remind me of the value of PCBWay though so have no fear, our Atomic 14-PCBWay partnership continues on. Keep watching for more such adventures!

A Potentially Explosive Error - Just received the new PCBs for the ESP32-TV project and they're looking sharp with only a tiny resistor tweak needed. But I discovered a sneaky, undocumented resistor causing a conflict between the ESP32 and USB2244 over the USB connection. Fixed that, but there's a bigger issue lurking in the design - check the schematic in the video and see if you can spot it before I reveal the explosive mistake!

The PCBs are in production - what have I messed up? - After some stress and trepidation, I finally took the plunge and sent my PCB design off for manufacturing. My design centers around building a large seven-segment clock with LED filaments. Jumping hurdles such as voltages, pin usage, and limiting the load on my power supply, I've settled on the ESP32 as the system's heart and come up with a final circuit design. While doing this, I've quickly realized I could improve my layout and fixed a small mistake. Also, I've prepared for either types of LED filaments - the high-voltage ones or the larger, 3v ones. However, I did bungle up a couple of things on the enable line of the shift registers and board layout. But hey, this is a learning curve, right? Can't wait to get the boards and see what other exciting errors surface!

I broke it and then i fixed it - Started off on a techie adventure with an RP2040 DVI board from Adafruit, aiming to get the pico-zxspectrum going. Things started acting haywire once the USB hub got involved, ending in a complete shutdown, intuitive diagnosis showed the power pin was a ghost town! After pin-pointing (and removing) the dead IC, I performed a delicate soldering operation to bless it with a new 3V3 regulator. Working the kinks out with the resolution led to a thrilling revival and, voila, we were back in business with DVI output and SD Card support!

Thats a wrap - It's that festive time of year when goodies arrive from PCBWay, and what a delightful surprise to receive the Partner of the Year award! A huge thanks to PCBWay, my Patreons, and GitHub sponsors for the amazing support. This year has been thrilling, starting with ESP32 projects and diving into nickel plating experiments. I'm particularly excited about the ESP32 Rainbow project, now fully funded and gearing up for a 2025 release. With lots planned for the coming year, here's to a Merry Christmas and an exciting New Year ahead!

Scripting KiCad to make coils - I've been diving deep into the world of PCB (Printed Circuit Board) coils, inspired by Carl Bugeja's incredible PCB motors! After deciding to set up an automated process for creating the coils rather than manually drawing them (can you imagine?), I found our main constraints became track width and spacing, and the number of layers we could use. During the process of creating spirals for our coils, I encountered some interesting problems - spirals are easy, but what about arbitrarily shaped coils? My attempts ultimately lead me to develop more efficient algorithms and KiCad plugins to generate these special coils. A rewarding challenge of math, programming, and electronics! My code has been published on GitHub, and I’m eager to see how others might make use of it!