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From NRF52 to pcb beacon with solar panel

stefano.luna

Hello! I have to connect some microphones (adafruit MAX9814) to a nrf52 board and I have to choose some beacons. My idea is to have a tiny solar panel that charges a capacitor in each beacon (maybe together with a battery if the solar panel current is not enough) and send data to a raspberry PI via Bluetooth. I found this kind of beacon but is out of stock. learn.adafruit.com/.../introduction

Can you suggest me a beacon suitable with a solar panel?

I would also like to design a board for this project, can you suggest me a free software to design the circuit? Up to now i used Eagle but just few times about 6 years ago to do a simple project, so I am not an expert.

Thank you!

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  • 0

    Hello stefano

    As Wojtek pointed out we have an example for a solar powered beacon with all documentation and hardware files needed to create your own beacon.

    As for free PCB design software you already mentioned Eagle. I also know of KiCad, which is a free and open source design software supported by CERN ,among others. I have looked at it myself but haven't gotten around to actually trying it yet, but what I've seen looks promising.

    Best regards

    Jørn Frøysa

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  • 0

    Hello stefano

    As Wojtek pointed out we have an example for a solar powered beacon with all documentation and hardware files needed to create your own beacon.

    As for free PCB design software you already mentioned Eagle. I also know of KiCad, which is a free and open source design software supported by CERN ,among others. I have looked at it myself but haven't gotten around to actually trying it yet, but what I've seen looks promising.

    Best regards

    Jørn Frøysa

Children
  • 0 in reply to Jørn

    Thank you Jørn. Can you point any other beacon suitable with nrf52 different from this?

  • 0 in reply to Jørn

    Unfortunately I'm not aware of any other solar powered beacons.

  • 0 in reply to Jørn

    I have one more question: I got the file from the solar beacon from nordic but I'm not able to open them (there are file with these extension: .pcbdoc, .outjob, .prjpcb, .schdoc):

    I tried to google how to open files with such extensions and I got Altium Designer as a suggestion. I tried to sign in the website to get the trial version but I wasn't able to download it. I only have been able to download CircuitMaker, but i couldn't find a way to import these files. Can you show me a way to open that kind of files please? I'm totally stuck on it!

    Thank you.

  • 0 in reply to Jørn

    I will look into this and get back to you.

  • 0 in reply to Jørn

    Unfortunately I have not been able to find a suitable substitute, nor have I found a way to import the layout into CircuitMaker. Though please note that I am not familiar with CircuitMaker. I have been able to import the schematic by creating a project and choosing add existing to project, but have not been able to import the layout. I have tried with both the original layout file and a protel version, in both cases I just get a invalid format error.

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