New minDUINO Variant.

Way back last year, before all the hassle that moving location entails, I started to design a minDUINO variant to work with the UKHASNet mesh network. Finally, having gotten settled down, to a degree, in my new location on the south coast of England, I have been able to continue.

I have designated the new board as minDUINO v1.6b. The major difference to the previous boards is that it runs on 3.3v rather than 5.0v. It utilises an LM-1117T regulator. Apart from that, it’s pretty much the same as versions 1.5, 1.6 & 1.7 apart from the additional resistor network, an ESP8266 WiFi module and an RFM69HW module for radio duties.

MinDuino v1.6b UKHASNet Node

MinDuino v1.6b UKHASNet Node

The RFM69HW is integrated on to the main board and the ESP8266 plugs into the header at the top of the board next to it’s associated component C10. Being based on the minDUINO, it retains all the programming and GPIO headers. I have added a header to access the RFM69HW’s GPIO ports as well. JP9 gives access to monitor the supply voltage pre regulator by connecting Vin to ADC0 on the ‘328 micro-controller and JP5 connects an optional indicator LED to D10 which the previous versions were hard-wired for. On the latest iteration of the board (not shown), there are also two through-hole test points to monitor the regulated voltage.

I have found it useful in the past to let a design sit for a while so that my brain can view it afresh and spot any glaring mistakes. My intention is to do so before having some PCBs fabricated by Hackvana. Eventually, the design will be published on the main minDUINO page under the Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike licence v4.0 for anyone to utilise as they see fit.

 

About admin

Twitter @Project_AVR
This entry was posted in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink.