PCB/Schematic Review

I have to say that you’re making life unnecessarily difficult for yourself by using an Arduino Pro Mini and ESP-01 together. It’s much easier to use a fully-fledged ESP8266 to do everything.
This has a few advantages:

  • Lower cost
  • Lower component count
  • Easier to support/debug
  • Supports OTA Updates
  • Supports 1024 levels of PWM output

This is what my RGB controllers look like:

This is basically this circuit from Adafruit but using a Wemos D1 Mini instead of the Arduino Uno and with the addition of an on-board voltage regulator and smoothing capacitor:

Regardless of which circuit you use, I’d recommend the following:

  • Add some mounting holes to your PCB so that its easier to box-up
  • Go for wider tracks on the bits of the circuit that will be handling the current of the RGB strip
  • Allow space for a heatsink on the voltage regulator
  • Add plenty of screen printed info, you’ll thank yourself for this later
  • Don’t be tempted to do a ‘copper pour’, the groundplane that it produces could block the Wi-Fi signals to the ESP

Pete.

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