Hi everyone!

I thought I'd post a quick update as to where I'm at.

First up, I'd like to say another big thank you to hackaday for choosing my project to win a LightBlue Bean! I'm keen to get my hands on this and have a play around, see what it is capable of!

The board I have had the least confidence in has been the power supply board. I feel a little out of my league with it, but have given it a shot in any case. The boards arrived a few days ago, and up until last night I hadn't had an opportunity to play with them. Now I have! I think all the time pouring over the schematics for the board paid off, so far everything seems to work a treat. I've powered it off my lab power supply, which drops down the 3.3v line beautifully. The filtering cap and bridge rectifier work well, although I haven't put it under load yet. In any case, the base schematic looks like it is fine, just the values of some of the components might need to change depending on the performance of it under load.

As you can see in the photo below, things are looking fairly positive. The green light on the power supply board is being powered from the 3.3v rail. The esp breakout on the right is being powered from this rail, and is switching the MOSFET on in the centre board, turning on the white LED which is being powered from the raw (12v) dc output of the power supply.

My next test will be to power it from an iron core transformer like I anticipate it using in the real world, and throw a downlight on it to see how the voltage output turns out with a bit more of a load on it.

One other thing I thought I'd have a play around with was solder paste and using a stencil. Some of the parts, like the caps and inductor, were looking like they would be a bit of a challenge to hand solder. When everything turned up, I think I was right. I bought a stencil from OSHStencils.com. They provide an awesome service. Thanks guys! The stencil arrived before pretty much anything else did. Overall, the end result turned out pretty great if I do say so myself. I've made up a video of my first ever solder paste application, I just need to edit it and post it up on YouTube. I'll post an update when I get around to it. This weekend is pretty busy for me, so hopefully my testing and editing can be done throughout the week.

Unfortunately I haven't had a great deal of time to work on the firmware. I haven't forgotten, I will post it up when I have something that is semi respectable.