- Michael J. Hammel - https://www.graphics-muse.org/wp -

APC PCBs

20151222_140952 [1]

Front side of the pcb [2]. The back side has labels for the components as well.

My first PCBs arrived in early December, but due to the holidays I haven't done anything with them yet.  I just wanted to show what they look like.

There are 5 small boards attached to my PCB:

  1. An ftdi basic [3] from Sparkfun for connecting a USB cable [4] to my linux [5] box for programming the microcontroller
  2. An arduino [6] Mini-Pro board
  3. A RTC clock board
  4. A tiny color display board
  5. An ESP8266 board

There is also a small usb connector [7] for power.  I don't have to use a real USB connector for this.  I just needed the power and ground points from a USB part for Fritzing to not complain about unclosed loops in the pcb layout [8].  I'll wire this directly to a power converter that takes 110V input and drops it to 5V output.  That way I can use the same power input used for the outlets in this project to power the PCB (and relays, for that matter).

Not all of these have to be connected.  I could just use the pinouts for them and wire them manually.  For example, I'll probably just add L-shaped male headers to the board for the ftdi [9] Basic.  It doesn't have to be installed for the board to work.