been working on a shield to make building easier.
MICROSD to reduce vertical size
charging circuit so you don't need to access USB or small Pin on PCB.
reed switch for on off.
Direct plugin for GPS

not yet sure if this makes it easier or not but what has become apparent is that it doesn't look that hard to build the full board with ESP32 and LCD screen
And everything we need.

this shield is circa AUD $5 delivered.

I expect a full unit with ESP32, LCD, GPS would be less than $30.

will keep working on it between windsurfing :)

That's nice. I was just yesterday starting on a PCB design to add an highside switch that would disconnect the ESP-GPS from the battery extending the battery life when switched off. I was also thinking making the connections to the BN220 through that same separate board. Now I see you also add the reed-switch and the microSD. Nice! How many connections do you need to make to te T5-epaper board?
What is the SOT23-5 chip next to the SD- connector? What application have you used and where did you have the PCB made including the assembly of the parts? I would like to give it a try as well.

Can we order it somewhere central or only through you? Perhaps you want to share the files you've used to create this?

Select to expand quote

Freezer said..
That's nice. I was just yesterday starting on a PCB design to add an highside switch that would disconnect the ESP-GPS from the battery extending the battery life when switched off. I was also thinking making the connections to the BN220 through that same separate board. Now I see you also add the reed-switch and the microSD. Nice! How many connections do you need to make to te T5-epaper board?
What is the SOT23-5 chip next to the SD- connector? What application have you used and where did you have the PCB made including the assembly of the parts? I would like to give it a try as well.

Can we order it somewhere central or only through you? Perhaps you want to share the files you've used to create this?

I used easyeda. It's free and pretty easy to use. There is then a link to JLCPCB who makes the PCB and adds all the parts. Plenty of good tutorials on YouTube. Takes about 5 days to get it.

the other chip is a voltage regulator for charging.

happy to share but not sure it works yet so will try it out at some point.

Select to expand quote

Alhop said..

Freezer said..
That's nice. I was just yesterday starting on a PCB design to add an highside switch that would disconnect the ESP-GPS from the battery extending the battery life when switched off. I was also thinking making the connections to the BN220 through that same separate board. Now I see you also add the reed-switch and the microSD. Nice! How many connections do you need to make to te T5-epaper board?
What is the SOT23-5 chip next to the SD- connector? What application have you used and where did you have the PCB made including the assembly of the parts? I would like to give it a try as well.

Can we order it somewhere central or only through you? Perhaps you want to share the files you've used to create this?

I used easyeda. It's free and pretty easy to use. There is then a link to JLCPCB who makes the PCB and adds all the parts. Plenty of good tutorials on YouTube. Takes about 5 days to get it.

the other chip is a voltage regulator for charging.

happy to share but not sure it works yet so will try it out at some point.

Ok, I was already using Fusion360 for 3D printing of the case, free for noncommercial usage and works great. I found out it has also an electronic part with schematic, pcb and even 3D rendering. From there I will send it to manufacturer to have it made. It missed some models for the diodes.

Select to expand quote

Freezer said..

Alhop said..

Freezer said..
That's nice. I was just yesterday starting on a PCB design to add an highside switch that would disconnect the ESP-GPS from the battery extending the battery life when switched off. I was also thinking making the connections to the BN220 through that same separate board. Now I see you also add the reed-switch and the microSD. Nice! How many connections do you need to make to te T5-epaper board?
What is the SOT23-5 chip next to the SD- connector? What application have you used and where did you have the PCB made including the assembly of the parts? I would like to give it a try as well.

Can we order it somewhere central or only through you? Perhaps you want to share the files you've used to create this?

I used easyeda. It's free and pretty easy to use. There is then a link to JLCPCB who makes the PCB and adds all the parts. Plenty of good tutorials on YouTube. Takes about 5 days to get it.

the other chip is a voltage regulator for charging.

happy to share but not sure it works yet so will try it out at some point.

Ok, I was already using Fusion360 for 3D printing of the case, free for noncommercial usage and works great. I found out it has also an electronic part with schematic, pcb and even 3D rendering. From there I will send it to manufacturer to have it made. It missed some models for the diodes.

The reason why we are exploring this, is that almost al devices after a while won't run on the battery anymore. Behavior is, you charge the battery and it looks full. You take is of the charger and it appears that the battery is for 40% full (or less) and won't charge higher. After a while it max 30% then 20% etc. Strange thing is that it still runs (logging) for 15 hours. Even a device that could be charged to 0% (max 3.4V) can log for 8 hours. That's actually strange. It look likes this happens for devices who are not used much. The esp always use a little power so the battery drains to empty (2.6v). So we thought that this would make the battery fail. solution would be to switch of the battery from the esp after it went to sleep. That's why this chip is made (there are other solution to).

BUT did the battery fail?
NO. After a lot of hardware debugging we discovered that there is a fuse just after the battery connector. This fuse is not present on the latest scheme (older schemes it does). This fuse rises in resistance after a while (deep charging), and causes the behavior. from all the device i thought that the battery has fail, no battery really fail. They are al "alive and kicking". Just reroute the battery power to the Vbat pin (this is after the fuse) on the esp (so don't use the battery connector), and it works like a new one. Who are we? That's Rp6conrad, Freezer, Paco and BigBoss (Andres)

Latest scheme




Old scheme

I'm thinking of upgrading the M10 to performance mode just because you can have up to 4 constellations at 10hgz. I bought a UART to USB connector to try it. In the specs, they say it is under 12 mA. In performance mode, I can't find the number, but I Guess it will be around 25. It's good to try with the 1800 batt I'm using.

Anyone tried before?

I never tried it, mainly because it is a irreversible change and you will have a higher current consumption.. When you want a higher performance, the M9 ublox is to consider. This is the Beitian BKxx range. They go around 20 euro : store.beitian.com/collections/gps-module/products/beitian-gps-module-with-antenna-ubx-m10050-gnss-chip-ultra-low-power-gnss-receiver-for-track-be-180?variant=44691179471135
They do even 25 Hz.
Greetings, Jan.

I know, but the M9 goes from 28 to 36 mA and the M10 is under 10mA in normal operation, no clear what it will be in performance mode but in the datasheet they mention 25mA, and is cheaper with a great performance, just a bit better accuracy . I'll try one unit

About the fuse, is it also defective in T-boards? (S3?) In that case, is it possible to wire the batt differently to avoid the problem?
thanks!

Perhaps worth mentioning the latest Motion firmware.

"10Hz is back but enabling it will forever reduce the battery life of the device by 15%, even if you switch back to 5Hz after."

www.motion-gps.com/motion/changelog.html

Select to expand quote

veton said..
About the fuse, is it also defective in T-boards? (S3?) In that case, is it possible to wire the batt differently to avoid the problem?
thanks!

Yes, there is a 2A fuse in the schematic. But there is no Vbat solderpoint, so not so easy to override this fuse....

Being a bit of an electronics pleb (uses a hammer to fix things) can you not put a bridge across the fuse or remove the fuse and bridge so that it is essentially bypassed?

I don't think I've read on here of any fuses being blown before.

Select to expand quote

K888 said..
Perhaps worth mentioning the latest Motion firmware.

"10Hz is back but enabling it will forever reduce the battery life of the device by 15%, even if you switch back to 5Hz after."

www.motion-gps.com/motion/changelog.html

By the size of the motion it will be probably on 500 mA battery, I'm using 1800 so I'm expecting almost no impact on draining. It is worth triying.

Very impressed with the PCB !

Select to expand quote

Alhop said..

I used easyeda. It's free and pretty easy to use. There is then a link to JLCPCB who makes the PCB and adds all the parts. Plenty of good tutorials on YouTube. Takes about 5 days to get it.

the other chip is a voltage regulator for charging.

happy to share but not sure it works yet so will try it out at some point.

Thanks for the great tip Alhop. I have been playing around with the website from JLCPCB and must admit a lot of good things are available there. The Gerber-output is easily read from Fusion360. The Bill-Of-Materials and the Placement file required for assembly requirea bit of tinkering as the standard format was not recognized.

Keeping everything as much as possible standard keeps the cost low. I just ordered 30 pieces of 12.5x8.9mm PCB only without the components. Payment with PayPall would cost US$7,52, inlcuding shipment and tax to Europe. Not bad at all! The components however are pretty small (SOT23-6, SOD323 and R0805), but still doable with tiny soldering iron.

I found that the minimum size for assembly is 10x10mm. So I adjusted the footprint to match it exactly and redid all the placement and wiring. Fixing the packages in the library was a bit of a pain in the *s, but fixed after all (including the 3D views of the packages). I was able to find all part numbers at JLCPCB-componentsearch. At placement I only needed to fix the pin1 of the SOT23-6 by rotating it 180deg and then it looked OK. Obviously having all the components assembled on the PCB is more expensive but 30 assembled PCBs US$36,91 without shipment is not too bad. Thinking about how long it would take me to solder these tiny components it will be worthwhile. I will wait with this order until I have the 1st batch without assembled components (I have the parts already in house), so might take 1-2wks ( I choose the cheapest shipment option).

Yet another tickmark on the DYI journey with the ESP-GPS. It was ~30 years ago when I designed a PCB on Ultiboard on a 486DX PC :)

This PCB should disconnect the ESP from the battery after shutting down preserving battery life. According the spec-sheet it should be 0,005uA (www.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/tps27081a.pdf). It is using just a single pole switch (could use the current reed switch everybody is using), connection to battery and using an extra GPIO pin on the ESP as it needs to get a second trigger to shut-down (disconnecting the batter would simply skip saving the file), Jan made and extra addition in the firmware for this.

Progress..

Nice, now I understand what you try to accomplish.
Keep tinkering................

There is room enough to add the high side switch solution from the same design Simon made.

Paco

Very nice design indeed! The opening for the antenna works well to make it a tight fit. The reed switch and the contact could be placed on the other side of the PCB to keep within the outer dimensions of the Lilygo board (although making it slightly thicker. I think the BN220 connector is slightly to thick to fit between the PCBs right?

What's next? Adding the M10 with antenna also to this board? Then we only need to hook-up the battery ;)

Select to expand quote

Freezer said..
Very nice design indeed! The opening for the antenna works well to make it a tight fit. The reed switch and the contact could be placed on the other side of the PCB to keep within the outer dimensions of the Lilygo board (although making it slightly thicker. I think the BN220 connector is slightly to thick to fit between the PCBs right?

What's next? Adding the M10 with antenna also to this board? Then we only need to hook-up the battery ;)

Have used the extra length as I like the screen in the middle when it's in the housing so the extra room is available anyway. Plenty of room to make it smaller if you are ok with an offset screen.

thought about adding GPS direct to the board but not sure if the antenna will work properly jammed between board and battery and not facing up. Anyone know ??

BN plugs needs to move 2mm to fit properly. Next iteration...

Select to expand quote

Freezer said..

Alhop said..

I used easyeda. It's free and pretty easy to use. There is then a link to JLCPCB who makes the PCB and adds all the parts. Plenty of good tutorials on YouTube. Takes about 5 days to get it.

the other chip is a voltage regulator for charging.

happy to share but not sure it works yet so will try it out at some point.

Thanks for the great tip Alhop. I have been playing around with the website from JLCPCB and must admit a lot of good things are available there. The Gerber-output is easily read from Fusion360. The Bill-Of-Materials and the Placement file required for assembly requirea bit of tinkering as the standard format was not recognized.

Keeping everything as much as possible standard keeps the cost low. I just ordered 30 pieces of 12.5x8.9mm PCB only without the components. Payment with PayPall would cost US$7,52, inlcuding shipment and tax to Europe. Not bad at all! The components however are pretty small (SOT23-6, SOD323 and R0805), but still doable with tiny soldering iron.

I found that the minimum size for assembly is 10x10mm. So I adjusted the footprint to match it exactly and redid all the placement and wiring. Fixing the packages in the library was a bit of a pain in the *s, but fixed after all (including the 3D views of the packages). I was able to find all part numbers at JLCPCB-componentsearch. At placement I only needed to fix the pin1 of the SOT23-6 by rotating it 180deg and then it looked OK. Obviously having all the components assembled on the PCB is more expensive but 30 assembled PCBs US$36,91 without shipment is not too bad. Thinking about how long it would take me to solder these tiny components it will be worthwhile. I will wait with this order until I have the 1st batch without assembled components (I have the parts already in house), so might take 1-2wks ( I choose the cheapest shipment option).

Yet another tickmark on the DYI journey with the ESP-GPS. It was ~30 years ago when I designed a PCB on Ultiboard on a 486DX PC :)

This PCB should disconnect the ESP from the battery after shutting down preserving battery life. According the spec-sheet it should be 0,005uA (www.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/tps27081a.pdf). It is using just a single pole switch (could use the current reed switch everybody is using), connection to battery and using an extra GPIO pin on the ESP as it needs to get a second trigger to shut-down (disconnecting the batter would simply skip saving the file), Jan made and extra addition in the firmware for this.

If I add this to my PCB does it need another reed switch or can I connect SW IN / OUT to the current one ?

Works with one switch, reed contact or push button.
Jan made adapted firmware for it.

Paco

Jan replaced the onboard 4MB chip with a 16MB chip.
That is the maximum ESP32 lib supports.
I did too and it works fine.
This way you do not need to use an SD card.
Same chip as used on the T-diplay version.
Enough room to record a full day of GPY's.
Less possible failing contact points or corrupted SD cards.
Needs adapted csv file to flash over USB only.

Keep tinkering.

Paco

Select to expand quote

PacoRaapNL said..
Jan replaced the onboard 4MB chip with a 16MB chip.
That is the maximum ESP32 lib supports.
I did too and it works fine.
This way you do not need to use an SD card.
Same chip as used on the T-diplay version.
Enough room to record a full day of GPY's.
Less possible failing contact points or corrupted SD cards.
Needs adapted csv file to flash over USB only.

Keep tinkering.

Paco

can you send me details on the chip and where to connect it - i will swap out the SD card

I think the BN220 connector is slightly to thick to fit between the PCBs right?
What's next? Adding the M10 with antenna also to this board? Then we only need to hook-up the battery ;)

As you need to solder the sub board anyway to the Lilygo, so you better make only solderpoints for the GPS?
The BE220 GPS always comes with a nice thin flexible silicone wire cable that can be soldered directly to these points.
This saves space and the GPS can be faced the way you want.
Otherwise with two connectors at both side you need a dedicated cable length too.

Paco

Select to expand quote

PacoRaapNL said..
I think the BN220 connector is slightly to thick to fit between the PCBs right?
What's next? Adding the M10 with antenna also to this board? Then we only need to hook-up the battery ;)

As you need to solder the sub board anyway to the Lilygo, so you better make only solderpoints for the GPS?
The BE220 GPS always comes with a nice thin flexible silicone wire cable that can be soldered directly to these points.
This saves space and the GPS can be faced the way you want.
Otherwise with two connectors at both side you need a dedicated cable length too.

Paco

Got the dedicated cable sorted.

Select to expand quote

Alhop said..
can you send me details on the chip and where to connect it - i will swap out the SD card

This is the 16MB flash chip : Winbond W25q128jvsq
nl.aliexpress.com/item/1005007401687554.html?spm=a2g0o.order_list.order_list_main.17.153b79d2T0t7On&gatewayAdapt=glo2nld
If you use a heatgun to remove the 4MB flash chip, you better remove the e-paper display first. The heat can damage the e-paper. Better to cut the legs of the old chip, and use a solder iron. Look for the correct orientation (pin 1 is marked with a point).
After replacing the chip, you need to flash again over usb the OTAWebupdater.ino, but now with a 16MB partition scheme (partitions.csv in the OTAWebupdater directory : github.com/RP6conrad/T_display/blob/main/partitions.csv).
You should end up with 13MB free flash memory for file storage.
Greetings, Jan.

Select to expand quote

Alhop said..

PacoRaapNL said..
Jan replaced the onboard 4MB chip with a 16MB chip.
That is the maximum ESP32 lib supports.
I did too and it works fine.
This way you do not need to use an SD card.
Same chip as used on the T-diplay version.
Enough room to record a full day of GPY's.
Less possible failing contact points or corrupted SD cards.
Needs adapted csv file to flash over USB only.

Keep tinkering.

Paco

can you send me details on the chip and where to connect it - i will swap out the SD card

nl.aliexpress.com/item/1005007401687554.html

Tip to remove the 4MB flash IC.
Put enough solder on the pins on one side.
Heat the solder on all 4 pins together and lift it gently when the solder is fluid with the tip of a cut off blade under the ic.
Do the same at the other side.
Remove the excesive solder with copper solder removal lint.
Solder the new 16MB flash IC with new solder.
Watch the orientation with the dot!

Paco

Select to expand quote

Freezer said..

Alhop said..

I used easyeda. It's free and pretty easy to use. There is then a link to JLCPCB who makes the PCB and adds all the parts. Plenty of good tutorials on YouTube. Takes about 5 days to get it.

the other chip is a voltage regulator for charging.

happy to share but not sure it works yet so will try it out at some point.

Thanks for the great tip Alhop. I have been playing around with the website from JLCPCB and must admit a lot of good things are available there. The Gerber-output is easily read from Fusion360. The Bill-Of-Materials and the Placement file required for assembly requirea bit of tinkering as the standard format was not recognized.

Keeping everything as much as possible standard keeps the cost low. I just ordered 30 pieces of 12.5x8.9mm PCB only without the components. Payment with PayPall would cost US$7,52, inlcuding shipment and tax to Europe. Not bad at all! The components however are pretty small (SOT23-6, SOD323 and R0805), but still doable with tiny soldering iron.

I found that the minimum size for assembly is 10x10mm. So I adjusted the footprint to match it exactly and redid all the placement and wiring. Fixing the packages in the library was a bit of a pain in the *s, but fixed after all (including the 3D views of the packages). I was able to find all part numbers at JLCPCB-componentsearch. At placement I only needed to fix the pin1 of the SOT23-6 by rotating it 180deg and then it looked OK. Obviously having all the components assembled on the PCB is more expensive but 30 assembled PCBs US$36,91 without shipment is not too bad. Thinking about how long it would take me to solder these tiny components it will be worthwhile. I will wait with this order until I have the 1st batch without assembled components (I have the parts already in house), so might take 1-2wks ( I choose the cheapest shipment option).

Yet another tickmark on the DYI journey with the ESP-GPS. It was ~30 years ago when I designed a PCB on Ultiboard on a 486DX PC :)

This PCB should disconnect the ESP from the battery after shutting down preserving battery life. According the spec-sheet it should be 0,005uA (www.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/tps27081a.pdf). It is using just a single pole switch (could use the current reed switch everybody is using), connection to battery and using an extra GPIO pin on the ESP as it needs to get a second trigger to shut-down (disconnecting the batter would simply skip saving the file), Jan made and extra addition in the firmware for this.

So do I just connect SW_IN to pin 39 and SW_OUT to ground and the existing Reed switch in that location will make it all work ?

Also where can I get the ESPGPS logo from. Want to add it to my board too.

first board with GPS SD REED and charging seems to work ok. Onto next iteration now. Going to try SD NAND FLASH instead of the card. No idea what I'm doing but Google is my friend and it's all working so far.

cheers
Al

Drawn different... same outcome.

Select to expand quote

PacoRaapNL said..
Drawn different... same outcome.

Should pad 38 be 19 like the other schematic ?