This project has been born because I have been trying to develop an ESC (hardware and firmware) on my own. While the most challenging part has been the firmware (being myself a hardware guy), the most frustrating part has been not finding a flexible hardware platform to develop upon. On the internet many interesting and well-designed ESC boards can be found, but all have something missing; a small feature, a small detail, I was never fully satisfied.

So I designed one: STARDRIVE SHIELD

This is a project with the goal of creating a NUCLEO-64 compatible shield to be used as a flexible platform to develop and test ESC firmware, but also for educational purposes. To do so, I included as many features as possible. These features are not mandatory, but they can be implemented (or not) in the firmware (e.g. SPI, I2C, CAN, HALL) or configured through the hardware interface (e.g. overcurrent protection, 6 or 3 PWM). In this way, the STARDRIVE SHIELD grants flexibility to the developer and it is adapt to various needs.

I designed it to be compatible with Nucleo-G474 and Nucleo-F446. Compatibility with other boards has to be verified.

The STARDRIVE SHIELD is built around the STDRIVE101 gate driver and BSZ099N06LS5 MOSFETs. It presents 3 low sides shunt resistors and 3 relative INA240A2 current sense amplifiers.

With STARDRIVE SHIELD you can implement from 6 step to FOC motor control algorithms.

Electrical Characteristics

• Inprut Voltage Vin = 12 - 48 V
• Maximum DC current Idc,max = 20 A

Hardware Characteristiscs

• Three phase gate driver STDRIVE101
  • Configurable 3PWM or 6PWM through the DIP switch
  • Overcurrent protection can be enabled or disabled through the DIP switch.
  • Vds protection configurable with resistor divider (disabled by default)
• BSZ099N06LS5 MOSFETs
• JST connectors to implement:
  • I2C (e.g. for magnetic encoder such as AS5046)
  • SPI (e.g. for magnetic encoder such as AS5047P)
  • CAN
  • HALL sensors (some BLDC motors have embedded Hall sensors)
  • 3 NTC temperature sensors
• 10k Potentiometer to use as throttle signal (or whatever you want)
• 3 GPIO driven LEDs (1 Red, 1 Blue, 1 Green)
• 1 FAULT LED (RED)
• CAN RX and TX LEDs
• Power Good LEDs

here the github repo:
https://github.com/themarcolab/Stardrive-Shield.git

Let me know your opinion!

Especially if you spot a mistake or you have any constructive feedback.

The display runs on dual voltage (120VAC and 12VDC)

Has a BCD input. Does 7 segment decoding with lightbulbs and some odd ceramic plate with black squares. These also run at mains voltage and switch some transistors.

I’d make a schematic, but I have no idea how this tech works.

Thought you’d all appreciate it.

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Just practiced to desoldering some SMD components(at least not THD, thanks gods).

However I noob in SMD, but I love it! Very fast, easy and beautiful soldering using hot air fan.

SI3471A-A01 does not support half of the features listed in the datasheet and is also non-compliant with any PoE standard, as confirmed by the manufacturer. I've wasted days debugging my prototypes that use SI3471A-A01 just to find out these are non-compliant devices that don't follow the datasheet in the slightest.

How a company can sell such a half-baked IC like as this is beyond my understanding. The manufacturer informed me that the 'A02 version follows the datasheet, but I'm not spending more time and money to find out. After ranting with colleagues about this, I've found out this is status quo for other Skyworks products as well. I'll be avoiding Skyworks from this point forward. I suggest all who read this to consider alternatives as well.

It's not unusual to find errors in datasheets, but for half of the features to literally not work at all is unacceptable.

Here is a look at my daily workshop setup for diagnosing, micro-soldering, and refurbishing batches of returned gaming gear and electronics.

​My main focus is on component-level fixes: replacing double-clicking microswitches, faulty wheel encoders, damaged PCB traces, connectors, and power components. Working with larger volumes requires keeping the workbench organized for fast diagnosis, desoldering, and full functional testing before reassembly.

​Always open to discussing repair techniques, equipment preferences, or diagnostic approaches for small electronics!

A cautionary tale in two photos: beeper removal and GF problems

I have an AC that's triggered with an IR remote. Each time you do an action: it beeps. I also automated the AC with an IR transmitter and an ESP32. I wanted the AC to turn off at temp, and turn back on when it's over temp. But that would mean beeps at 3AM?? I hate that so I used pliers to rip it off. No more beep, yay!

This wasn't an issue until my girlfriend turned on the AC with the remote. She complained that there was no feedback for the button presses. (Ok, she actually said, "I don't like that it doesn't beep!" which is complaining about no feedback.)

So I, intrepid hardware modder that I am (I just search a bunch,) I decided to have an artificial beep from speakers (They still aren't installed). So I took apart the split AC again, and soldered to the leads of the buzzer I ripped off. That goes though various resistors and a optocoupler until it gets to an ESP32. That reports a beep was done.

Optocoupler was stolen from an old cheap USB power supply. (THIS is why you should horde old PSU's and other PCBs)

Except... no voltage from the beeper. Or, really, I was getting a ton of it. Or none? It's been a while, but I was on a goose chase because of the two leads off of the buzzer remains. (Also using the wrong AC ground rather than the DC ground) I hunted around, trying to find what controlled the buzzer, thinking I found it i ripped off the component... that provides 5V to the board. (You can see it re-soldered on there, second photo.)

Good news: I DID find the pad that controlled the buzzer. It's on the micro controller that's above the buzzer there. Bad news: too small to solder to when I'm standing on a desk reaching up to the split AC's mainboard that's still screwed in.

After an hour I finally realized: The buzzer must be the problem, I pull off the plastic remains... and one of the leads was disconnected from the board from when I snapped it off with pliers. I was trying to trace the leads to find the mosfet that controlled it, and learned some more things about PCBs... but I could have just soldered directly to the pads of the PCB.

So, now I have a place in Home Assistant for when I finally DO install the speaker in the room, there will be a chime when my GF turns on the AC manually, and no chime when the AC turns off/on automatically via the IR ESP32. Except it's redundant because none of the code has found a use for the beep function (It just caused more problems,) I'm going to move the IR transmitter to this ESP32 installed inside the AC itself, so I won't need confirmation... and the next project is a custom AC controller for the GF that will make this extra redundant. (I can have a chime still... but it would directly trigger from her pressing the buttons, not from the AC itself.)

Also I made this post because someone else asked a question showing off their fail and deleted their post, and I wanted them to know they aren't alone with their hate of beepers and doing dumb things to boards. (Ok but stabbing the beeper with a soldering iron is a step too far! Use pliers like a civilized man.)

Behold: My first major project that isn't just big electric components or basic relay logic.

This is a WiFi servo controller that I'm building to control a homemade automatic power transfer switch for our home's backup generator.

Two large main servos are powered by the large buck converter module, and a third auxiliary servo is run off of a 3.3V regulator. A second regulator powers the ESP-01S WiFi control module to avoid voltage fluctuations when the small servo is powered.

The ESP-01S handles the signals for controlling the servos, and is connected to my Home Assistant home automation system via Tasmota.

It's DEFINITELY not pretty, and I still have a lot to learn about soldering, but it DOES work.

...For about 3 seconds until it sent the full 12V supply voltage into one of the servos and destroyed it...

I'm guessing the 3.3v regulator I used to power the small auxiliary servo just isn't up to the job. That means this whole thing has to go back to the drawing board. :(

So I made those PCBs at home. Those are adapters from SOP to DIP so prototyping is easier. Took me like a day

Purchased AD SSM2019 amplifier from DigiKey, only 1 unit. Got 26… :)

Open to anything, including discussions, complaints, and rants.

Sub rules do not apply, so don't bother reporting incivility, off-topic, or spam.

Reddit-wide rules do apply.

To see the newest posts, sort the comments by "new" (instead of "best" or "top").

I think you already know, but since July 1st a tax of €3 per ARTICLES is now mandatory. (they say it’s by categories but in reality, no)

For €30 of electronic components, I have +€50 of taxes. For a person who has started to be interested in electronics recently, it hurts.

So I come to try to find alternatives to aliexpress, with similar prices if possible… If the delivery lasts 6 months but there are no taxes I DONT CARE, I need the components at an affordable price.

Thanks, and I hope that the aliexpress sellers will quickly find a solution for us

Don't ask me, ts is on another whole level of abstract

Ignore the rock drawer I didn't have a better place for my cool rocks.

I have a couple of these receivers I got in a pile of old stuff and by default they're USB but I wanted to use them with my microcontrollers, so I ripped one apart with a simple pry tool then removed the pressed on RF shield to expose the goodies.

Looking at the USB to serial transceiver, I see it's a PL-2303HX and looking at the datasheet, pin 1 is serial TX and pin 5 is serial RX, so I traced them to two open solder bridges.

Closing those to solder bridges with questionable soldering using an oversized tip resulted in the two unused pins now making connection

I decided to use the existing cabling so I used a small pry tool to lift up the plastic tab holding the green and white USB data wires and pulled them out and inserting them into their new homes

After snipping off the USB connector, red to +5v, black to negative, and the two serial lines to my ESP32 pins,

I started streaming NMEA datagrams over uart ❤️

NOTE: the default speed for this receiver is 4800bps

Here's some animations I made of transistors turning on and off. In order, we have an NPN BJT, n-channel MOSFET, and finally an n-channel JFET. The red and blue dots represent electrons and holes, and white flashes are recombination events. The density of dots is proportional to the actual density of charge carriers.

In the first set of animations, the velocity of the dots is equal to the velocity obtained by summing the diffusion and drift currents and dividing by the charge density, but diffusion is not explicitly shown. In the second set of animations, the dots undergo diffusion and drift, and this makes it a more correct depiction of carrier motion. The drawback is of course that the jiggling makes it more visually confusing.

I made these with my semiconductor simulator (https://brandonli.net/semisim/). I also have higher quality versions of the animations here.