One of my past PCB projects is the "pxlBlck_multiPCB". As the name suggests, this board is the heart of several future pxlBlck variants.
So far I have used the Wemos D1 Mini Board with the ESP8266 built into it as the main MCU in many projects. The circuit is supplied via a micro USB connection. Unfortunately, this forces you to reduce the power consumed to a maximum of 2.5W. The brightness of the connected LED matrices must therefore be reduced by software.
To get around this problem (among other things) I developed the pxlBlck_multiPCB. It not only has a USB-C port (which can be used to draw up to 15W), but also a lot of other practical components.
- ESP32 Wrover-B
- DS3232M RTC
- USB-C connection including programming option for the built-in ESP32
- BME280 climate sensor
- Micro SD card slot
- MPR121 touch sensor for up to 12 touch electrodes
- MAX98357 3W I2S DAC
- ADXL345 accelerometer
- IR LED
- QWIIC-I2C expansion port
- 10×10 SK6812 LED matrix (on the front of the board)
I had the circuit board manufactured by the circuit board manufacturer PCBWay.com, who made it available to me free of charge. At this point, thank you again for the great service and cooperation. 🙂
In the following you can see a few pictures of the fully assembled circuit board and (almost) all possible components. Unfortunately, due to the current shortage of chips, some sensors such as the BME280 are very expensive or poorly available, which is why I did not install it.
Safety instructions
I know the following hints are always a bit annoying and seem unnecessary. But unfortunately, many people who knew it "better" from carelessness lost their eyes, fingers or other things or hurt themselves. In comparison, a loss of data is almost not worth mentioning, but even these can be really annoying. Therefore, please take five minutes to read the safety instructions. Even the coolest project is worth no injury or other annoyance. https://www.nerdiy.de/en/sicherheitshinweise/
Affiliate links / advertising links
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Requirements
For the construction you have to master SMD soldering tasks. The following articles provide tips on how to do this.
- Electronics - My friend the soldering iron
- Electronics – Solder THT components by hand
- Electronics – Solder SMD components by hand
Required tools:
PCB manufacturing: You can find all the information you need to manufacture PCBs here:
The assembly
In the past you have often seen individual pictures at this point showing which components belong where.
An even better way to get an overview of which components belong where on the PCB can be seen in the following paragraph. Thanks to the work of the OpenScope Project, you can now generate very helpful HTML files in which you can see directly which components belong where on the PCB.
You can see the overview for the pxlBlck_multiPCB here: pxlBlck_multiPCB
The current file can also be found in the Git repository under the following link:
https://github.com/Nerdiyde/pxlBlck/tree/main/PCB
(Please note that you have to download the HTML file in order to display it. You cannot do this directly from the Git repository.)
Have fun with the project
I hope everything worked as described. If not or you have any other questions or suggestions, please let me know in the comments. Also, ideas for new projects are always welcome. 🙂
P.S. Many of these projects - especially the hardware projects - cost a lot of time and money. Of course I do this because I enjoy it, but if you appreciate that I share this information with you, I would be happy about a small donation to the coffee box. 🙂
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