Activity

Visage

Took me a lot of research and tutorials, but after repeated failed attempts, I have finished routing the PCB.
Instead of using wires of a greater thickness, I have used a zone fill to support the load of the 8.4V wire that goes directly to the motor drivers. I have the zone fill to flood the board with copper as it made the wiring significantly easier for me and also acts like a heatsink, which obviously, is good.
Unfortunately, the BMI270, the IMU I was using, was out of stock on JLCPCB. Hand soldering the bare chip on my IMU board is not possible, as it has pads below the chip, and I don’t have a hot air gun. Instead, I am sourcing a BMI270 breakout board from a website within India. The bare chip was costing me around $5.54, and the breakout board costs me around $3.12. This actually cuts down the price significantly, as now I won’t be needing a second board, reducing around $10 to $15 (PCB + Price of other components + BMI270 bare chip), and also the trouble of using a hot air gun.
I will also be sourcing the ESP32-S3-WROOM-1-N8R2 and hand soldering it, as getting it from JLCPCB requires me to switch to standard PCBA, which adds an additional $25, which is senseless, as the chip itself is quite easy to solder by hand.
With the PCB being done, I’ll move on to the 3D-printed body of the gimbal and the firmware for the MCU.

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Visage

This is what the schematic looks like right now. I have completed all the modules I thought of initially.
Replaced the 2-pin connector for the battery with a 3-pin connector as I plan to add a BMS protector board later.
I have used hierarchical sheets for the driver motor as I didn’t want to make the schematic messy.
This was my first time making a PCB of a scale this large, although I almost lost my brain figuring out the battery module, it was quite fun.

This schematic isn’t final (I think), I will probably make changes as I plan ahead.

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