Networking and Communications

This week’s assignment was to design and build a wireless node.

Design

I decided to create a board using the wireless ESP32 chip. I redesigned the ESP32-WROOM board with additional headers routed from the pins, ground, and VCC.

I then routed the paths.

Milling

After designing my board, I milled it. Initially, the individual traces for the ESP board did not mill properly.

Hence, I had to adjust the footprint and decreases sizes of the pads connecting to the chip.

Stuffing

I then stuffed my board. Soldering the ESP board took some time as the pins were extremely small.

Programming

Finally, I programmed my board to light up when an LED is plugged in.

 1const int LEDPIN = 5;
 2const int BUTTON = 9;
 3
 4void setup() {
 5  pinMode(BUTTON, INPUT_PULLUP);
 6  pinMode(LEDPIN, OUTPUT);
 7
 8}
 9
10void loop() {
11  // put your main code here, to run repeatedly:
12
13  int sensorVal = digitalRead(BUTTON);
14  if (sensorVal == HIGH) {
15    digitalWrite(LEDPIN, LOW);
16  } else {
17    digitalWrite(LEDPIN, HIGH);
18  } 
19
20}

Overall, the input and output devices work very well!