Small update:
Got SWD debugging working, see my other thread. Display is working fine. Still have to test the touch screen functionality.
The 5V linear regulator works, but it generates quite a bit of heat.
The board + spark + display draws 250mA. So the LDO has to dissipate (12V-5V)*250mA = 1.75W
This might become problematic when the board is put into an enclosure.
I might have to reconsider the choice to use an LDO and go for a switching power supply instead.
If you do go with a switcher, take care to minimize noise/ripple on the output rail.
If the switcher produces too much ripple (e.g. poor layout, high ESR caps, etc) you can push the on-core LDO into oscillation. Key symptoms of that problem are very high LDO power dissipation (aka, it gets very hot) and/or erratic behaviour of the core.
The core doesn’t need an elaborate or difficult switcher, but it pays to make sure it is at least decent.
C4’s return is quite long… see if you can get that ground connected more directly to the Core’s GND.
As a general practice, the planes under L1 should be split in the middle with a gap, vs. shifted to one side like you have it. Or better yet, remove the ground plane under the inductor completely. Unless the inductor is a shielded type, then it doesn’t matter much, but I’d still gap it center it just because I might not be able to buy a shielded type of inductor down the road. The ground plane on the bottom under the inductor is not serving a purpose for heat or much for current either, so you could clear it away there as well. Do some research on this as well, this is kind of stuff I do because I’ve run into issues in the past during EMI testing and SMPS tuning. YMMV
C4 return path is GND pin on header --> bottom plane --> GND pin on spark. It’s not that long? I can place it under the spark core though and it will be shorter.
Ahh, ok… didn’t see that GND pin on the 3 pin connector. That’s not so bad, but ideally you want both legs of the cap to be between the the input connections and connections to the spark core.
If you have a reference design, definitely go for that first. It’s shielded anyway, so no worries… just a more expensive part. Reference designs are a good place to start, but also be cautious as they are not always going to give you what you need.
Don’t be afraid to stitch your GND planes from top to bottom a bit more… it’s basically free.
yes i am dutch
would love to help you, i am great in copy pasting code and troubleshooting stuff, not so much in writing blank code.
still happy to help.
Not only does it look great…I think you have done an awesome job in the short time that you have been working on this project…Just simply very well done…Wish I have the electronic and programming skills to help push it down the road to completion just a bit faster as I’m very eager to try it out…
Glad I didn’t place my order for the BrewPi shield tonight before looking at this thread.
Is it too late to start looking at using the Photon instead of the Core?
Because it comes with enclosure and all, I decided to call it the BrewPi Spark, instead of BrewPi Spark Shield.
I hope that’s okay, because every unit will have a spark core inside I thought it was appropriate.