BLE

After designing the nRF PRO I decided to continue using the form factor and add a more capable MCU as the ESP32-S2 that has Wifi capability with a lot of Memory for the app and data.

It is a breadboard-compatible development board featuring the ESP32-S2 series of SoC, Xtensa® single-core 32-bit LX7 microprocessor 4 MB flash and optional 2 MB PSRAM in chip package 26 GPIOs, rich set of peripherals such as UART, SPI, I2C, TOUCH, DAC, ADC, and USB, a 2x2mm SK6812 RGB serial LED and a 0603 SMD blue LED. USB-C connector, castellated holes for low-profile integrations, and an onboard PCB antenna.

I have been using this board for all my projects as it’s easier to add to all my current and old projects such as the display-Array, the Cistercian Display, and the Dynamixel Configurator.

This board is very versatile as I have been able to use it easily to test any idea that I have in a protoboard before adding it to a custom PCB, also is easy to add to any new project and not having to place all of those components and having to RF match the antenna every single time. The dimensions are efficient and I love how it looks as it’s a very thin PCB.

The board has enough pins with the correct peripheral in hand to accommodate to any project you may have.

Lately, I have been using the services of PCBWay for my projects as they have awesome customer support and great quality PCBs, I really love how they do the castellated holes for my boards in a couple of days.

Let me know in the comments below how would you use this board or any project idea that you would like me to explore using this board. If you need more detailed info go to my GitHub.

This is a new project using the nRF52832 BLE MCU as a very versatile development platform that will allow me to do many projects that requires a connection over Bluetooth and also can perform actions to control basic systems, as data acquisition, data display, motor control, graphical interfaces and much more.

This board dimension is 48x18mm with 30 castellated holes on the side, a micro USB connector for power, and programming through a USB to serial converter CP2104, two tactile switches for user interface and firmware programming, 1 user LED.

I have made a small panel for easy fabrication, This panel dimensions are 92x66mm including the tooling rails at the sides. In this panel I want to test several things that a usually do not order in a regular PCB, such as tooling rails with tooling holes, external fiducial, Logo with EING finish at the top tooling rail, solder mask and cooper restrictions for text and logos, and castellated holes in a routing job, v-score at the edges of the board as well on the tooling rails.

I quoted this panel in many PCB Manufacturing houses and order some boards for the best price in the market that includes all the characteristics described above with PCBWay. (Even cheaper than the well-know 2 USD – 5PCS PCB Manufacturing House).

These board are now getting manufactured, the customer service has been awesome so far, as I ask to place the UL Marking on the Top Silkscreen layer in the bottom layer of this panel and received a preview of confirmation of this requirement, and received awesome feedback regarding the Vscore and Solder mask capabilities.

Making this board possible required some knowledge in PCB Manufacturing that I will below describe the research and application.

Castellated Holes: Also know as castellations are plated through-holes or vias at the edge of a board cut in the middle by a router making them pads that can be soldered to another PCB and make subassemblies.