Decided to forgo the entire USB-C nonsense and just stick with the built in micro-USB on the Pico. Printed a new housing top to accommodate the different connector location, but I should still update the PCB design in KiCAD to remove the USB-C and fix a few other issues like the trace gap width and the pad extensions for the castellated contacts on the Pico. Installed the entire system and attached 2 fans to my roof ducts. One fan attachment used some 3D-printed screw adapters, and the other just used magnets. I used wood-glue coated cardboard as a low-cost water-resistant barrier on the ducts, which worked pretty well. The overall system worked pretty well. It dropped my attic temperature from around 90F to around 83F in 2.5 hours. ![]()
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Fabricated the PCB with the usual process. For reference 1/2 tsp washing soda in 250mL water for the developing solution and 1 tsp sodium hydroxide in 250 mL for the stripping solution. Need to make the gaps between the PCB traces wider and put some insulator under the USB-C shield. See video. ![]()
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Made slight adjustment to copper traces on PCB design and printed a UV mask. Also made a slight update to the software to hopefully improve TCP connections. ![]()
Updated housing model to have flanges to screw into the wall. Printed in translucent orange (best color) PCTG and found 4 perfectly sized screws in my jar. Updated the Pico web server code to show the server start timestamp, hide the historical data by default, and update to the final 30-minute delay in datapoint recording. ![]()
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Designed 02007-002 and -003 housing components. There are holes in the box for the antenna (unnecessary), USB-C connector, motor wires, and sensor wires. ![]()
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Designed circuit schematic and laid out PCB design for the control unit. ![]()
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Spent a while getting the connection to the time server working. Attached UI image shows a datapoint every second for testing purposes, but will probably be every ~30 minutes in the live version. ![]()
Got the preliminary software mostly working. Ignore the broken UTC date, having some issues with the time server. It allows GPIO control of a Pi Pico 2W thru a webserver, and that will eventually toggle on some small vent fans. It also reports the temperature and humidity. I could eventually add logic that turns on the fan based on the relative temperatures inside versus outside. ![]()