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It's time for a bit more testing of the boards from PCB Way, and I must say, these boards have come out amazingly well. Check out PCB Way – there's a link in the description! Today, we're focusing on testing the battery charging and the expansion port. The battery charging circuit seems successful, and even when playing music, everything is running efficiently. I've looked into some optimizations for the speaker side, such as adding more decoupling capacitors. We also tested the expansion port, successfully running an emulator on the Pico that drives the display via the expansion port. Excitingly, I wired up an HDMI breakout board and now we have a big screen! This is still experimental, but it's looking promising. Next steps include more focus on EMI and EMC as we prepare for production. Stay tuned for more updates!

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Transcript

[0:00] it’s time for a bit more testing of the
[0:01] boards from PCB way I must say these
[0:04] boards have come out amazingly well
[0:06] check out PCB way there is a link in the
[0:08] description of the video and thanks also
[0:09] to all the patreons who are supporting
[0:11] me so what I want to test today is the
[0:14] battery charging and the expansion Port
[0:16] so I plugged in the battery you can see
[0:17] it’s at 4.1 volts and we’re testing out
[0:20] the charging circuitry and I have messed
[0:22] this up before so I’m quite interested
[0:24] to make sure that I’ve done it right so
[0:26] hopefully we should see the battery
[0:27] voltage going up so that seems to be
[0:30] pretty successful we also want to
[0:32] monitor how much current we’re drawing
[0:34] so 200 milliamps with the whole thing
[0:36] turned off that does match up with the
[0:38] actual resistor I’ve used for the um for
[0:41] the battery charging circuit and then
[0:43] when we’re running we’re running at
[0:44] around 300 milliamps so that’s not too
[0:46] bad what’s quite interesting when
[0:48] there’s music playing is um it is
[0:50] actually drawing quite a lot of C so
[0:52] around 4.5 amps and if we look at the uh
[0:55] the graph it’s really fascinating so we
[0:58] are drawing quite a lot of current with
[1:00] the speaker and the voltage which is the
[1:02] yellow Trace is dipping down quite a bit
[1:05] so you can see that if I just um move
[1:07] this a bit closer When the Music Stops
[1:08] it calms down a bit but then as soon as
[1:10] we start playing music again we do get
[1:13] that voltage drop and the current spikes
[1:15] so I think what I need to do is add a
[1:17] bit more decoupling capacitors around
[1:19] the speaker side of the system um so
[1:21] I’ll be looking at that and how to
[1:23] improve
[1:27] that and if we turn off then uh
[1:29] everything goes back just to charging
[1:31] the battery um so we’re back to our 200
[1:34] milliamps now I may actually increase
[1:36] the charging current uh with a 1,000
[1:39] Milah battery that’s going to take a
[1:40] while to charge but just to prove it
[1:42] does work I’ve just unplugged the USB
[1:45] and you can see it’s all running off
[1:46] battery now so everything works as you’d
[1:48] expect and we still can play Manic minor
[1:51] so that’s pretty good we still get all
[1:53] the stuff working and it works really
[1:55] well off battery that’s not bad at all
[1:57] and just to check I’m going to try
[1:59] charging the battery to its full
[2:00] capacity so just to prove it is working
[2:03] you can see the light has turned green
[2:05] when the battery is fully charged now
[2:07] you might be wondering what all these
[2:09] wires are doing here well I want you to
[2:11] test the expansion Port as well so what
[2:15] I’ve done is I’ve exposed the display
[2:17] lines on the expansion port and I should
[2:20] have exposed the SD card pins on the
[2:22] expansion Port but unfortunately I made
[2:25] a slight wiring mistake and I didn’t
[2:26] expose the right pins but what I’ve got
[2:29] now is a p Pico my nice pink P Pico
[2:34] wired up to the expansion port and the
[2:37] display so what we should be able to do
[2:39] now is let me just move the camera so
[2:42] you can see everything um I’ll plug in
[2:45] the p
[2:46] peo and turn on the
[2:49] board plug in the
[2:51] PPO we’re now running an emulator on the
[2:54] PPO which is driving the display via the
[2:57] expansion port and it’s hooked up to my
[3:00] keyboard so what we should be able to do
[3:03] if this is
[3:05] working let’s just uh make sure
[3:08] keyboard’s
[3:10] configured and why is it now working oh
[3:13] there we go so there we go so this is
[3:16] working over I squ C so our esp32 is
[3:19] reading the keyboard and that’s sending
[3:21] messages over I squ C to the Pico which
[3:24] is running another emulator that’s then
[3:26] driving the screen so you can see that
[3:28] all works nicely we can go into basic
[3:31] and I’ve also hooked up the buzzer so we
[3:34] should be able to get a beep out of
[3:37] this so beep one comma
[3:41] 2 it’s pretty quiet but if we go into
[3:44] the menu which I think I do like that
[3:47] get a nine and then Pump Up the
[3:52] Volume and then exit from that let’s try
[3:55] that
[3:57] again peep one comma
[4:01] two we’ve got sound as well now I’m
[4:05] going to jewelry rig the SD card so that
[4:09] I’m exposing the right pin and try that
[4:12] and then I’ll show you something quite
[4:13] interesting so I’ve got my bodge wire
[4:16] wired up and um now I’ve got everything
[4:18] else wired through the expansion Port so
[4:21] if we go into the menu go into snapshots
[4:23] you can see we have all these snapshots
[4:26] and that works well so let’s scroll down
[4:29] and we’ll start up the usual manic
[4:35] minor so that’s working fine loads it
[4:39] up going to jump around oops de it so
[4:44] why is this interesting you might ask I
[4:45] mean we can do this with the esp32
[4:48] what’s so special about this expansion
[4:50] slot well let me show you something very
[4:52] cool so yes why is this interesting well
[4:56] I’ve now wired up an HDMI Breakout
[4:59] boorder
[5:00] still plugged into my keyboard here but
[5:02] if I turn the camera
[5:04] around there you go we have a big screen
[5:08] everyone’s been asking for it you’ve now
[5:10] got one so this is all very experimental
[5:14] obviously at some point we’ll need to
[5:16] make this work properly uh with an
[5:18] expansion um board but um yeah it’s
[5:21] pretty good so let’s just type in a bit
[5:23] of code hello world
[5:30] where’s the semicolon G there it
[5:41] is there we go big screen for you all so
[5:45] um obviously what we need to do is get
[5:47] this board actually finished on in
[5:49] production so the expansion board will
[5:51] come later I need to start thinking
[5:54] quite carefully about um Emi and EMC so
[5:58] I’m going to spin up a new version of
[5:59] the board I’ll be switching to a four
[6:01] layer board and I’m thinking about those
[6:03] sort of things now getting ready for
[6:05] production so I’ll see you in the next
[6:08] video


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Chris Greening

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atomic14

A collection of slightly mad projects, instructive/educational videos, and generally interesting stuff. Building projects around the Arduino and ESP32 platforms - we'll be exploring AI, Computer Vision, Audio, 3D Printing - it may get a bit eclectic...

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