Voltlog #257 – ESP32 PIR Motion Sensor With Deep Sleep & MQTT (revB part2)

In this video I’m gonna show the second revision of my esp32, battery powered PIR motion sensor. This second revision contains some optimizations to improve deep sleep power consumption as well as to fix some of the errors I had the first revision of the pcb.

Voltlog #240 – ESP32 PIR Motion Sensor With Deep Sleep & MQTT

Welcome to a new Voltlog, in this video I’m gonna show you how I designed and built this board which functions as an esp32 based, battery powered PIR motion sensor. So I started by designing the circuit, I used some common building blocks, I added the ESP32 with it’s bypass caps, some test points and the programming circuit with auto-reset, I then added some connection points for the PIR sensor, an RGB LED because why not have a nice way to signal this is one of those very small digital RGB leds, it’s just 20x20mm, it’s connected to 3.3V even though it’s only rated for 5V so I’m hoping this is going to work even on 3.3, it’s also worth having a temperature/humidity sensor to also sense that in whichever room the node will be placed and finally the power supply circuit which is a simple low dropout regulator with an 18650 battery as the input.

I did not include a battery charger circuit on this module, because I wanted to keep things simple, I’ll have a battery socket so I can just remove the 18650 cell and charge it separately plus the whole circuit should run in sleep for extended periods of time giving me a long operating time so i wouldn’t have to charge the battery too often.

Once the schematic was finished I did the board layout in a hurry so it’s not exactly pretty or optimized

but I tried to move the esp32 antenna to the side, to place the PIR sensor in the top side as the module will probably sit vertically, I tried to place the temperature sensor in the bottom side to keep it away from any components that might get hot and also placed some isolation slots for the same reason.

You should check-out revB of this board, I made some improvements present in the video below.

Voltlog #226 – InTheMail

Welcome to a new InTheMail, the series that will touch both your passion for electronics and your bank account at the same time. We’re gonna start with this set of tweezers from Vetus. A few months ago I was considering buying some more expensive electronics tweezers but the good ones are really expensive when you include shipping as well so in the end I decided to give these a try. I’ve had Vetus tweezers in the past and some were good some were bad. This time I asked multiple sellers on Aliexpress if the tweezers are original Vetus or not, some responded and promised their goods are original. Coincidentally or not those who said their products are original also had higher prices. In my experience with suppliers, they never lie about the origins of a product if you directly ask them so I tend to believe that what I have here are genuine Vetus tweezers