Tag Archives: Level Shifter

Cost review

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Newest SDK:

Espressif has moved the SDK to GitHub.  At this point, It is version 2.1.  I have no indication that they have done anything with the ADC Feature I requested.  I have not updated to this newest SDK yet. I will do that before I spend any time working on firmware.

New component costing:

The 74LVC2T45 level shifter chips are US $0.32 each in low quantities.  The PCA9306 I2C level shifter are about US $0.60 each in low quantities.  This results in the costs of the level shift components arount $1.50.  The original single part costs around US $1.25 each in low quantities.  This is not a big difference in cost but it does affect board space.

Design review:

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Schematic update

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Arduino compass toy:

I have had a little time to play with the OLED panel this week. Unfortunately, I still can’t get it to work.  I have been trying to get it to work in SPI mode, But I think I now want to try to start working in either 8080 or 6800 modes.

Schematic Update:

I updated the schematic to reflect the results of my testing from 2 weeks ago.

I still need to try a high gain transistor in place of the one I used to see what will happen.

I am waiting to make some decisions before I update the schematic on GitHub.

Decisions:

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Vpp Regulation test

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Second Thoughts:

I am having second thoughts about co-processor model.  This significantly increases the complexity of the firmware for this design.  I haven’t ruled out any options yet.  If I can get a good voltage for Vpp without the co-processor, I may decide to go back to the level shifter.

Programmatically controlling Vpp:

I have been thinking about how to make an “adjustable voltage” switching regulator adjustable by the microcontroller.  By putting a transistor on the low side of the voltage divider feedback, I believe I can have linear control of the generated voltage controlled by the Sigma-Delta output. I got a basic circuit design from the FAN5331 datasheet. I then replaced the ground side resistor of the feedback voltage divider with an NPN transistor.  I came up with the circuit below.

The FAN5331 has a 1.25 volt reference comparator to decide if it needs to generate more voltage or wait.  With the Sigma Delta input to r3 at 0 out of 255, the transistor will never turn on and the voltage on the feedback will be above the 1.25V threshold and the regulator will effectively shut down.

Resistor Calculations:

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Refactoring Electronics (Hardware V00K)

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Side Project:

I still haven’t gotten the OLED display working.  I am beginning to question Pinouts and even if the driver IC listed by the seller(s) is correct.  At this point I can’t even tell if the device is seeing my commands. I checked the board for shorts/solder bridges and even replaced the OLED display. I still can’t get anything to show up on the display.

I think a reasonable test would be to measure current to the display and send it a power on command.  If I am sending commands correctly, I should see a change in current draw.  After that, I will try working through the commands available in the datasheet for a SSD1332 chip looking for a change in the display or the current draw.

Refactoring:

Just like refactoring the code, It’s time to refactor the electronics design.  I checked on my feature request on the Espressif forum. Nothing new has happened.  So I am considering adding an external ADC to measure voltages.

Planning and Research:

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Refactoring

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Update:

No new information on the ADC feature request on Espressif”s forums.

Side Project:

I have started layout of the SSD1332 Breakout PCB.  I finished the layout and ordered PCBs from OSHPark.  Based on the datasheet for the SSD1332, I can get significantly better performance by using it in one of the 8 bit bus modes.  Someone suggested that I look at STM32 processors to drive the display with.  I will be considering that option this week.

Better Firmware:

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Design Decision

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Side Project:

I am moving forward with the Compass toy prototyping.  I am designing a simple breakout PCB for testing the display. I may put the display breakout for sale on Tindie.

Project Intent:

The primary goal of this project/blog is to show electronics design start to finish.

The design goal is an inexpensive in circuit chip programmer that will work for most devices available.

Options:

The Raspberry Pi Zero was released November of 2015 at a price of $5 US each.  I even got one with a copy of MagPi.  To Make it run any code at all, it needs a power supply and microSD card.

Of course I could continue with the current design.

Common components:

Both the Raspberry Pi and the current design need the following components.

Printed Circuit Board
Battery for power supply and charging circuit
Vpp Supply
Level Shifter Circuit
External ADC(Still undecided for current design)
USB to serial Bridge (not sure it’s necessary for R Pi)

Additional components for Raspberry Pi:

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New Build

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Update:

The level shifter came in this week.

Populating the board:

I installed parts out of my kit in the order that I grabbed them, until I had enough to do the basic test.  The board powered up and the blue LED on the ESP-12F blinked once.  Unfortunately the board wouldn’t program.

I started probing with my Oscilloscope.  The serial data lines looked normal when I tried to program the board. Then I looked at Reset and GPIO0 lines and found that GPIO0 was oscillating at 24 MHz. The Reset line was working as I expected it to.  I used a 1 MOhm resister as a pull down on GPIO15. I chose 1 MOhm to reduce the amount of current when A_Sel is High.  I knew this could cause me trouble, GPIO15 is used to put the chip into SD card mode. That may be too much resistance.  I changed that resistor to 10 KOhms to see if it made a difference. It did!

I uploaded the defaults, then my code. My simple serial menu came up in the terminal. With it working, I went on to populate the rest of the board.  I came up short 2 components, the pin header I use for the lithium cell and Q2.  I grabbed both of those from the last build and completed populating the board. I reconnected it to my computer, re-connected the serial terminal and the serial menu is still working.

SPI RAM Testing:

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Update layout Hardware V00I

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Finally time to update the layout.  The charging circuit works well and I changed the level shifter on the schematic last week. So this week, I updated the layout.

I started by generating a new netlist. Next, I ran CvPCB to verify all the parts had footprints associated with them. They all do. Next I ran PCBnew and imported the netlist; making sure the exchange footprint settins was set to change.  I got an error:

Error: Component 'U3' pad '~' not found in footprint 'Housings_SSOP:TSSOP-20_4.4x6.5mm_Pitch0.65mm'

I had to figure out what that means before moving on.  It suggest one of the pins was named wrong either in the schematic symbol or the footprint library. I checked the schematic symbol first. I noticed the GND pin didn’t have a pin number assigned to it. Easy fix, added it and updated the library. I set the GND pin number to 11, saved it to the library, made sure it was in the schematic correctly, and re-generated the netlist.  I had to delete it and re-place it into the schematic to correct the schematic.  This meant that CvPCB no longer knew the footprint to use, so I updated it and re-generated the netlist again. No more errors in PCBnew import of the netlist.

I started by ripping up the unconnected traces. Then I started placing footprints.  I hid the bottom layer to make it easier to see what I was working around on the top layer.  Once I had the parts placed, I started routing traces.  I had to adjust component placement a few times to get everything to fit.  As I got to a point that I couldn’t do all the traces on the top side of the board, I un-hid the bottom layer.  While I was working with both sides, I had to re-fill the zones several times to correct for the areas I added new traces on the bottom side.

I finally got to 0 unconnected nets. I did a quick look to make sure all the references were readable and not under other parts.

layoutv00i

I plotted out the Gerber files and did a quick check to see if it looked OK and got ready to order.  When I look at Gerbers, I am looking for broken traces and unintentionally connected traces.  I used Gerbview to do this check. As I went into Gerbview and tried to load the files, the were double of all the files.  It looks like the developers of KiCad decided to change the naming conventions  for output to gerber.  I went in and deleted all the files in that folder and re-ran the plots.  While looking at the gerber files, C10 and U3 references were covered up.  I went in and fixed them and re-plotted.  While I was at it, I discovered U10 wasn’t anywhere near it’s footprint.

I created a zip file with the plot files ready to upload to a fabrication house. I have uploaded the files to the github repository, click the hardware link in the right column to go get it.

Are you using Kicad?  What tools are you using to design in?  Do you have trouble finding datasheets for Chinese parts?

Design testing for layout

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I tested the battery charging circuit this week. It failed.  The lithium cell would charge, but when I disconnected the power adaptor everything shut down.  I didn’t understand how the enable lines worked.  In my hurry, I missed an example circuit in the datasheet that closely matched my needs. Most importantly it showed where to connect the enable lines for “normal” operation.

So for my client, I connected a diode from the out line of the chip to the in line of the chip(where the enables were connected to). The diode makes sure the out line is controlled by the chip and it can manage the current correctly.  Note D5 in the schematic below.

D5addition

This works but it is kind of a hack.  Hacks are great for testing prototypes, doing one off designs, and temporary changes.  Hacks lead to problems in production, if at all possible hacks should be avoided on production runs.  The right way to connect this circuit for both the programmer and my client is to connect EN and ENO to the +5V rail and ENBAT to the battery positive terminal.  This configuration means that anytime power is connected to the power, it will supply system voltage from the +5V supply and charge the lithium cell with whatever current is left from the 450 ma I limited it to.  When the +5V rail is not powered, or under powered,the lithium cell supplies current to system.

LithiumChargerFixed

I modified the code to connect the sigma delta to GPIO13 to drive the level shifter signal, then connected 5 Volts to the Vt and measured the waveform on the pad that corresponds with GPIO 13 through the level shifter. It didn’t work, Or the DSO138 oscilloscope can’t read the sigma delta signals.  I found a recommended power up sequence of the the level translator chip that I hadn’t considered before, the /OE pin should be brought low after power up.  This is to prevent excessive currents, I shouldn’t get the results I am seeing, I decided to try just toggling the GPIO12, 13, 14 pins controlled by the serial communications.  The system has gotten very unstable, I decided to re-flash the user config and wifi calibration data.  Turned out that Vt was/is shorted to ground, My best guess is the Pad directly under the chip solder bridged to the Vt(Vccb) pin of the level shifter chip.  Time to lay out again.

Do you have any Ideas or suggestions that might be useful for this design? Would you do anything differently?

Electronics design review (Hardware V00D)

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The circuit is almost ready to go to layout again. This week I took a close look at the schematic design to look for errors and unfinished tasks.  By the way, you can put notes on a schematic to help you find anything you put off for later.

I have received the PCBs for my client, but I haven’t had the chance to populate the first one yet.  This means I haven’t had a chance to test the charging circuit yet. The availability of inexpensive PCB fabrication like OSH park has made a mini PCB test run reasonably priced.  You can now design a development board that exactly meets your requirements very inexpensively.  Since each iteration of the this design isn’t costing a lot, I am testing multiple changes each time. This allows me to work with devices that I am completely inexperienced at very low risk.

I started with the lithium cell charging circuit. I verified the input from the micro USB connector is tied to the input of the management chip.  I copied the timing and current limit device values from my client’s design.  The lithium cell (connector) is connected to GND and the dedicated pin on the management chip.  The status outputs are tied to LEDs so I have some indication of what is happening during charging. I may try to incorporate these signals later in the design. The system power output is connected to the 3.3V regulator which is working well on the two test boards I have already built.

Next I looked at the SPI RAM Chip select logic.  The transistor Q6 turns on when CS0 is low; this pulls the chip select line for U2 high preventing U2 from contending with the SPI bus when the flash chip is being accessed.  There is a diode blocking the high from pulling GPIO15 high during reset. There is a pull down resistor for when GPIO15 is low and CS0 is high to activate U2 chip select. This is untested but the design looks like it will work.  I chose 22K resistors for the pulldowns on GPIO15 and U2 chip select as a balance between current required when GPIO15 is high and the speed at which U2 chip select will fall when released.  Since I don’t know the amount of capacitance of that circuit, I may have to change that resistor value later.  Good place to put a note on the schematic.

U2 Schematic notes

The level shifter U3 is untested, I should test it before I go to layout. Another note.

I decided earlier that the voltage booster was working but needs to have an isolated ground on the PCB layout.  I have added an inductor between the boost GND and the system GND.  This allows for some experimentation.  I can just bridge the pads with solder, I can put a resistor in there, or I can install the inductor. If isolating the GND is enough, that’s great.  The resistor would help provide better filtering but could cause problems.  The inductor is best filtering but will slow down signal transitions of the high voltage. I also gave the net name GNDpp to the isolated GND.

Vpp GNDpp isolation

The transistor driver for VPP is untested, because I haven’t had the positive voltage available. I could have attached a 12 volt source and tested it but it’s a simple circuit. It should work. The analog switch is working, nothing to review with it.

Finally, the programming control pins RST and GPIO0. I am not happy with the resistor connections. I have decided to copy the design from the NodeMCU dev board.  It is simple and works well on the dev board.  The only thing I am concerned about here is how much current the UART bridge pulls when not connected to USB.

CH340 Crossslink

Use the GitHub link to get a current copy of this design. After testing, I will go to layout.

I would love to hear any questions or suggestions.  If you would do this differently, please comment.