NFC reader works, what next

It has been a month since I came up with this crazy idea, but the NFC reader board is working really well now. To be fair, every version I have made has worked, just some better than others. The most noticeable impact on how well it works is the inductors. Using small inductors (i.e. 0603) means it is crap - needs fob flat on then antenna to do anything. Now it works around 2cm. I have changed layout a lot, changed the antenna shape, changed component size. Lots.

I have, however, learned a lot about ESD protection, layout for RF, choosing components for RF, using KiCad, and solder paste. The solder paste has perhaps been to be the biggest change as I am no longer afraid of adding passives, which previously would have been far too annoying to hand solder and take too much space. Lots of 0603s are no issue now.

So I have a nice NFC card design, thanks a lot to John for his help. I also have a nice door control module which is tiny, and only 7mm thick. Easy to fit in a back box with other stuff.

If any hack space want to have a play with one of these NFC boards, let me know. I'd be interested in feedback. Main advantages over Elechouse are red/amber/green LEDs, tamper button, door bell input, and more ESD protection.

The boards, and 3D cases, are all on GitHub.

So what next?

Well - battery power - that's what. I have made up a new regulator for my boards rather than using the Pololu boards (they really are very good!). It has an automatic ECO mode dropping to 27uA.

Planning to work on Ultra Low Power mode on the ESP32, see how low I can get it, and run from a battery.

So now I need a board that can be low power. This means the USB chip needs to be turned off when not using USB, which is fun as it means I do not want to power its I/O pins for Tx either - and the ESP32 blurts lots of debug on Tx at start up. So a small FET is in order. Also quite fun as the FT231X USB chip works the RST and GPIO0 pins, so need them to work properly when no USB power.

P.S. Why USB?

Someone asked why do I have USB at all? I used to have boards with USB-C for power, and a header for programming, but it was actually less space and easier to just fit an FT231 to the board instead of the header, so using the USB for power and serial load/debug. The battery board is perhaps an exception as it needs a couple of extra components to let me disconnect the USB, but even so, on a board this small an extra programming header would be tricky, so I decided to stick with USB serial.