Temperature Control Part 2 -PC Board
Today we will see the temperature controller circuit board. This board was designed with the idea that a human with a soldering iron would be working on it. Everything is solderable by hand, and the parts used are robust enough to survive some abuse.
PSCarrier Schematic
The schematic of the board follows on this page. Notice that there are several unused pins brought out to the side of the carrier. This allows this board to be used in other projects.
The Black Circles labeled JP1 through JP6 are jumper solder pads on the board. Using a solder blob, you can short that particular jumper and connect the two wires together. (Just feed enough solder on your soldering iron tip to bridge the pads.) If left unsoldered, the circuit board traces are unconnected.
Board
The board layout is a little tight once the CY8CKit-059 is installed. I recommend soldering all the external components in first, and then soldering the CY8CKit-059 board on last. The Rectangle on the 059 Kit board outline is the micro-usb connector. The Programming tab sticks off the board on the other side (to the left in the image below).
The Eagle 7.7 board files are available here. You can use a built in Eagle ULP called “bom-ex.ulp” to produce a parts list. This ULP is available under the File menu on the Macintosh. There are several Bill of Material (bom) ulp’s available. Try each one of them.
All the holes are on 0.1 inch centers, so you can pick up solderable pin strips from Amazon. Even the small-diameter holes for the connector labeled J1-Nextion is on 0.1″ centers. You can substitute your on connector there.
A bundled box of row female connectors and pin strips can be purchased from Amazon here for about $14 before shipping. Mouser and Digikey also sell these strips and connectors.
Ordering Your Own Boards
Having the board layout file is just the beginning. A GREAT service is provided by OSH-PARK. They provide you 3 boards for an extremely reasonable price, and ship them free via US Mail. I cannot say enough good things about these people. They have been exceptional.
The price you pay is known before you click the buy button, and there are several options available. You have to wait for a panel to fill up for this price. However, you can select express service, select expedited options, and other board types, for additional fees. When I needed the options, I found the fees to be very reasonable.
I have found the people at Osh Park to be very easy to deal with. They have not hesitated to either redo the boards or refund my money when issues arose. Their quality is typically very high. For hundreds of boards ordered over several years, I can count on one hand the times we had issues with their shipped product, and they made it right without a hassle.
Their website allows you to take an Eagle .brd file and drop it onto their “upload” section. Their computer software takes it from there, and produces your board according to the Eagle file specifications. They also take other file types such as Kicad.
A Small CloudFlare break was Taken, Then..
As I was posting this originally, I had issues with upload of the zip file for the carrier board. At the very same instant I clicked on the download link for testing, CloudFlare died, making this site inaccessible, for many hours. Unfortunately, I had to wait until the next week to more or less finish the download link and finish this post, due to other time constraints.
Hopefully the first post in August will continue the path for development of the Infrared Control Thermometer.
Enjoy!
About The Author
W Maxfield
Firmware/hardware Engineer for too many years.