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Boards have arrived!

A project log for Wi-AC Control

An arduino compatible, wireless AC control platform for DIY home automation.

connel-hepburnConnel Hepburn 12/29/2016 at 12:230 Comments

I sent the gerbers off to China as the UK board fabs were really expensive for a 10x10cm board (about £35-50 per unit!) and only could do 7 day turnaround at a sensible cost. I went with a fab called Smarter-Prototyping (NOA Labs) and they turned out quite nicely! I was able to get 10 boards with ENIG finish and blue solder mask on a 4 day turnaround for <£50 delivered with customs. The best part was, I sent the design out on the 15th December and had the boards in hand on the 23rd December before Christmas. Impressive turnaround overall. Some shots of one fo the boards are below.

Whilst reviewing these boards I noticed a reasonably critical mistake in the isolation section. In my rush to get these boards out before Christmas it seems I got a bit excited and forgot to remove the planes around the relay pin area and the optoislolator , effectively only obeying clearance on the isolated DCDC output nets but none of the other nets. In the second revision I'll probably force every net on the isolated side to have a specific type of netclass and then ensure the clearance and trim the planes further back..

The worse part seems to be the 5V which runs right next to the relay coil pin, therefore if there was a failure there would be a coupling mechanism to 5V through this pathway here. Still a lot to learn with isolated designs it seems :(. Therefore there is a potential safety issue of the relay coil does fail catastrophically.

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