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PCB Manufacturing, Prototyping & R&D in the Maldives

Custom ESP32-S3 development board — professionally manufactured by JLCPCB. A far cry from where it all started. It Started in a School Science Lab — Around 1998 Most people who get into electronics start with a kit, a tutorial, maybe a breadboard and some LEDs. I started by sneaking ferric chloride out of a school science lab to etch my first PCB. That was around 1998. I was living in the Maldives — a small island nation in the Indian Ocean — where there was no electronics supply chain, no maker community, no local PCB fab. Just a chemistry cabinet at school, a copper-clad board from somewhere, and a lot of curiosity. This post is about what the next 25+ years of PCB prototyping looked like from there. The early wins with proper chemicals, the years of improvisation when those chemicals disappeared, the real injuries, the failed boards, and finally — the moment JLCPCB changed ever...
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Test run for Autonomous boat. 18-04-2014

Today we planed to conduct as much as possible test runs before sunset so we did three successful missions. For today's test new gadget was introduced to record video from front of the boat. So i modified a key chain camera( which the battery is damaged) and fixed a 3.7V battery to power it and it was gooood. :). I gave a name to this mod as "Go puroa". Go puroa All the three test was good but due to some technical issues an unattended guys the test was bit delayed. The boat traveled around 60 - 70 meters wider way-point locations. Command center which uploads all mission way-points and manual override if any thing goes wrong (if the boat goes too from reach due to some error). Few data result of the test . Even though the sea is not calm enough the boat tries its best to with the small waves. videos will be uploaded soon once all videos are converted to up loadable format to YouTube. Conclusion:  There few code fixing to be done while...
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The autonomous boat build.

Today is one of my happiest days of invention. Finally after lots of frustration of hardware limitations and experimenting day and night on my free time, i manage to test my hardware part in real environment condition. I am talking about a vessel which runs autonomously to the way-points and returns to home without any control by me or anyone. I can not go too deep on this project cause this is group project which i am working on and i hope the final product will be live on web once fully completed. The test run first run was a mess, yes it was a mess with lack of knowledge of building the steering and motor control the whole test was a failure and a passing by small boat help us to rescue out boat. So after this i have stop building this further and starts experimenting and learning the steering logic. Kab0000000ms Kaboooms and loss of valuable hardware during hardware experimenting but with support managed to get new stuffs to start the experiments again. Re Test run ( the...
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Its here and its manual override controller

Its been a while that i am working on an autonomous vehicle and some major parts are tested and still going on with the project. For this project its better to have a manual override control via RC remote controller.  After researching the RC controller and receiver i have found out the RC remote controllers use PPM signals to control the servo and ESC. In one of my earlier post's i have mentioned reading the receiver outputs and tested how it can be controlled. PPM signal out from the RC receiver. I have on of my bixler controllers and finally able to use it for this project. Hobbyking 6 channel receiver and 4 channel transmitter is used for this and i wont guaranty that this will or will not work with your projects. The PPM signal will vary depending on different vendors. I read all the output of the receiver and log it for further reference.   Designing a circuit Since the code will be very very simple i decided to use ATtiny13A-PU as the micro contr...
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Bootloading Atmega1284P Part-2

 After the the part 1 of this episode i had some weird problems with the ATmega1284p. Sometimes i am able to upload the sketch via ISP and UART side also having some issues to upload sketches and use as an serial port. So i ask some assistance from the letmakerobots.com and explained whats going on with my 1284p. Since i boot loaded it recently, i did not have any idea of what might be the cause. Finally bajdi from LMR replied me and after few conversations with him, he mentioned that he have used 1284p lots of time and this guy built robots, controlling lots of servo from it. So my boot-loading is perfect. When i run single servo sweep sketch the jittering and wobbling starts and stops. So i planed to take the circuit out of bread board ( which have created problems and weird interference a lot for me) and build it on copper strip board which is in the image above. With the proper smoothing capacitors and supply it worked. I manage to upload the sketches via UART side and c...
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Bootloading Atmega1284P Part-1

Finally able to flash the Arduino bootloader it to fresh Atmega1284P via my version of ISP programmer. ISP programmer includes and Atmega328P and FTDI board for serial communication between PC and the Atmega328P. Armega328 is loaded with ArduinoISP sketch. This works with Arduino 1.0.1(old version that i use for test) IDE and still testing for Arduino 1.5(i have upgraded to). Once the following files installed to the Arduino Hardware folder ( https://github.com/maniacbug/mighty-1284p/zipball/master ) please mind to restart the application. After restart you will see from the hardware list as Original Mighty 1284p 16 and 8MHz. Select the hardware, port and the programmer as Arduino ISP and burn the bootloader. This process takes quite sometime and after its loaded, do a test by loading blink sketch. Use upload using programmer button to upload the sketch. Blink sketch on test.. cool it works for me. I am trying to workout this method in version 1.5 too, as soo...
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RC receiver Hack

I have interface the Hobbyking HK-TR6A V2 a six channel receiver to my chipkit uC32 (Arduino equivalent to UNO). Actually this came up to mind when manual override was needed for a project currently i am working on. In this video i have just monitoring the wave forms which receiver outputs. Once i done testing i will upload more information and videos. I am planing to make a prototype soon. ;)   Readings measured   Waveform of the PWM
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GPS Data logging

 After few months of break finally managed to do some electronics stuff. Before i have tested GPS and SD card so now its combined. GPS data logging to an SD card in CSV format. The main part was to get NMEA data from GPS and convert it to one that i can use. $GPRMC,023042,A,3907.3837,N,12102.4684,W,0.0,156.1,131102,15.3,E,A*36 $GPRMB,A,,,,,,,,,,,,A,A*0B $GPGGA,023042,3907.3837,N,12102.4684,W,1,04,2.3,507.3,M,-24.1,M,,*75 $GPGSA,A,3,04,05,,,09,,,24,,,,,2.8,2.3,1.0*36 $GPGSV,3,2,11,09,47,229,42,10,04,157,00,14,00,305,00,24,70,154,33*79 $GPGLL,3907.3837,N,12102.4684,W,023042,A,A*5E $GPBOD,,T,,M,,*47 $GPVTG,156.1,T,140.9,M,0.0,N,0.0,K*41 $PGRME,8.4,M,23.8,M,25.7,M*2B $PGRMZ,1735,f*34 $PGRMM,WGS 84*06 $HCHDG,,,,15.3,E*30 $GPRTE,1,1,c,*37 $GPRMC,023044,A,3907.3840,N,12102.4692,W,0.0,156.1,131102,15.3,E,A*37 The above is NMEA data that comes our from UART of the GPS. Later capturing the following line to get latitude, longitude, fix, speed etc $GPGGA,023042,3907.3837,N,12102.4684,W,...
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