💬 rayBeacon: nRF52 on-the-go Development Kit

[Mishka]

A little update. The nRF52833 test boards assembly was just finished. Now waiting for delivery.

[Nca78]

@Mishka said in 💬 Raybeacon: nRF52 on-the-go Development Kit:

A little update. The nRF52833 test boards assembly was just finished. Now waiting for delivery.

Hello, who do you use to make the assembly ? Most PCB sellers who also do assembly have suspended the service at the moment.

[Mishka]

Hi @Nca78, I've placed the order on the PCBWay in early January, so it's almost finished. The factory just recently restored assembly services for some kind of boards including this one. Hope to have it in hands within a week or two.

[Mishka]

Assembly completed. Please see updated photos on the project page!

[Mishka]

Hi guys, FYI the revision 1.2 just came out.

After using the board for a while some non-critical fixes were introduced. To mention few:

• The RGB LED got color and current optimizations. It's also recommended to stick to green or blue to minimize current consumption.
• The breadboard adapter was inconvenient to cut-off and now fixed with a less fancy outline.
• The board got AEC-Q200 qualified 32768Hz crystal.

There are still some items on my TODO list (in particular, I'm not too happy about the extension socket - it can do more, and I'm going to address that separately), but the board is quite handy and definitely works. For this reason I think it's time to reset the W.I.P. bit and call the project stable.

[Mishka]

The revision 1.3 is here! It adds hardware RESET feature to the SW2 push button, as well as to the SWD port. Not a big deal when attached to debugger, but so handy on the go.

Please note, the change make break your firmware because SW2 was mapped to P1.02 GPIO and now linked to the P0.18 / RESET.

[Mishka]

So, while here I've decided to close my TODO list. The revision 1.4 is likely to be the last chapter in this design, and now it can be considered safe to order. It introduces some important final touches to the board, in particular:

• The orientation key (diameter 2.1mm) on the board edge. It's located between the Tag-Connect and the board main area, and initially can be used as an eyelet. After the Tag-Connect removal it works as an orientation key for the board.

• Full rework of the silk layer. Just to mention few: I hid all designators and decorated the board with eye catchy "52" over the nRF52 MCU, touched the antenna outline, and moved the git hash to the mainland.

• Review and cleanup the ground plane. The changes were tiny so it shouldn't detune the antenna, but aesthetics were definitely improved. You may also want to order the board in Afterdark colors now:

Have fun!

[NeverDie]

@Mishka Very nice work indeed. One question though: I don't see an antenna of any kind built into the PCB. Maybe I'm just not seeing it, or is there none? I do see a connection for an off-board near field antenna, but off-hand I don't see where the antenna is for 2.4Ghz RF.

Oh, I see it now. You're using a chip antenna. Got it.

Well, now that you've been using it for a while, how is the Raybeacon working out for you?