No No-bell prize

I wanted to improve our doorbell... Yes, that is dull.

But the main change is not the bell (a nice, old style bell in the kitchen, which is driven by a Shelly, and the sitting room, and flashing lights in bedrooms and hot tub), or the bell push itself as such, but a sign on the door by the bell.

We used to have a simple brass "please ring the bell" sign, pointing to the bell push. Still, too many people knock instead.

Push the button

So the idea is a sign, and additional bell push right by it, on the actual door. The sign has the house name and number and road name - that itself may help as we get parcels for the same number in the next road often, and they get ours. But a sign saying ring the bell with a hand pointing to the bell push right by the sign.

The magic happens when they push the bell (either the new or old bell push) - the sign lights LEDs on the back and changes. The basic option is like this...

I included a barcode with date time and postcode for photos when leaving a parcel.

Seasons greetings

I also decided it may be a fun idea to change the message, add Christmas tree for now, and so on, but even regionalise the message...

The idle message can be updated and made seasonal, I may even automate based on date, but also the message shown when you press the button can vary depending on circumstances. This saves me putting a sign on the door when we are out - which is a notice to everyone that we are, well, out. The message for when we are out ("leave parcels behind the double gates") is only shown when someone pushes the bell. Indeed other messages can be set if needed.

Let there be light

The main way it decides what to show is based on lights. Yes, that seems crazy, but is incredibly simple when almost all lights are Shelly running tasmota and reporting to MQTT. I can track light states. I have a stairs light which only gets turned off when the alarm is set (we are out). I also track the hall light, which is an easy way I can indicate "we are busy, leave by the door" for when I am in the hot tub, etc. Indeed, if I change a light when the message shown updates in real time, so if in the hot tub I can remote turn off the hall light from my phone when the bell rings.

I also have Mastodon DMs for the bell, with exact time stamps to make easy to find in CCTV.

It also means control of the status display is something my wife can also easily understand and change if she wants, just using light switches.

Making a board

Obviously I designed my own circuit board for this. It works with a waveshare 7.5" e-paper display.

It sticks to the back of the board, has an ESP32-S3 with wifi, USB connectors, and big solder tabs for wires for power and the bell itself. It was designed so it could be set in resin even (though that seems to break the e-paper, possibly by getting in the FPC connector). So a bare board with acrylic spray for now.

No-bell prize

It did not work. The screen did not update properly. I was disappointed to say the least.

Old

New

The fix was to change the inductor and make it work, yay, no no-bell prize for me now.

So, finally, it works!

Update: The only reason this board is this size is because it has LEDs (one in each corner) do fits the 7.5" e-paper. If not then it could use a much smaller board, which I have also designed. But the new version of this larger board now has 24 LEDs, given that the LEDs are the only reason for the larger board this makes sense, but it may be a slight power issue as they are 10mA when white, so some testing may be necessary.

Update: I love the fact I have been accused of "nerd sniping" Bloor. He got one of these 7.5" panels with the waveshare HAT, and somehow he totally messed up the simple task of the FPC connectors, so much he broke several of them, and then managed to crack the display trying to get one working, and threw it all away. I come in and not only have no problem with the connectors, but then I don't just use the 7.5" panel and HAT with no problem, but make my own better PCB, and a new smaller PCB, and a version 2 of both boards, and a working door sign, and now even listing on Amazon! Is that "nerd sniping", or am I bad?

USB-C Plugs, Sockets, and 5V supply

Assuming you want to use a USB Type-C connector, but just want USB2 (D-/D+) and 5V power.

So many get this wrong, however, it seems the answer is quite simple.

It would seem there are a number of connectors you can get, with just the main USB2 pins, or with all USB-C pins.

For a USB-C Socket, you need to connect CC1, and CC2, separately, via 5k1 resistors to GND. Like so.

However, for a USB-C plug, the CC1/CC2 pins are actually CC and VCONN. You connect CC via 5k1 to GND, and leave VCONN unconnected. If you connect both then it won't work! Like so.

Yes, the connector is reversible, so actually it does not matter if A5 or B5 are connected to the 5k1 resistor, just as long as only one of them is.

LiPo batteries

I have done a lot of small circuit boards, but one of the challenges with any board is battery working.

I used the Watchy as a good example of this, understanding how to put the ESP32 in to deep sleep and so on. This worked very well. What I had not done until now was actually make a battery based board myself.

The first attempt, which was a massive long shot, was to test if I could run an ESP32 (ESP32-S3-MINI-1) off a button cell. The answer is no. This was not a big surprise.

So the next attempt was this :-

This has a small LiPo battery, an LDO regulator, and a charger circuit. This is basically copied the choice of components for these from the Watchy design.

There are a few things you need for battery working though - for a start, I have a FET to control power to the LED chain. The LEDs, when idle, do use very little power, but for battery working I want it to be zero power. So I have a GPIO that actually switches the power for the LED chain on and off (this is the small WS2812B compatible 3.3V RGB LEDs I have been using lately).

Another small trick is to also use a FET to switch the battery voltage to an ADC. The ADC on the ESP32 needs a lower voltage, so has a potential divider. The problem is a potential divider uses a small amount of current all the time - so again, this is switched on using a FET. I don't know if that is really necessary, but every uA helps. This should, hopefully, allow me to confirm battery levels whenever I need.

One small issue, which I have yet to quite get to the bottom of, is waking from deep sleep. The ESP32 IDF seems to suggest it is possible to make any RTC GPIO cause a wake on a state change. This is ideal for any buttons (I have two on that board design). However, that did not seem to work. I'll experiment more. There is, however, a separate way to do this, which is you can have a set of RTC GPIOs and wake on "any high" or "all low". For more than one button (I added two for the hell of it), this only really works if you have the idle state of the button low, not high. I had, as is common, had these buttons switched to GND with a pull up. I had to change the design not be reversed to allow wake on either button being pressed (at least until I get the "change of state" logic working).

I had fun finding a suitable upright USB-C connector, and I have juggled the various connector positions a bit since this original design.

Now to find what the battery life is when idle, and how many times you can use it before it goes flat. But it does work - yay!