DIY 10" sunlight readable plotter

[BellaX]

Really amazing work hats off! What else are you considering adding? Something like the Moitessier HAT with AIS/GPS ...... ? Looking forward to following your work.

Hi mmcintosh,

i have made two expansion pcbs to be connected to the 30pin connector.

One pcb with a Antenova GPS, MPU9250 IMU and LPS25 barometric sensor
and a second pcb with NMEA 2000 and 0183.

Both pcbs have a 0.1" 4pin header for I2C interface while the nmea pcb
have an extra header for 1-wire.

I have ordered 10 of the LCD panels last week and today I will order the pcbs.
Most of the LCDs are already taken by friends. Currently I don´t know if we
have leftovers.

For the pcbs I can definitely say that we will have much more than needed.
Because the assembly will be in the Maker-Space near Munich. They have
a pick and place machine and a vapour phase soldering machine.

It is not the best machine but it works well for all the resistors and caps:
https://www.maker-space.de/article/2142....tomat.html

For this I need to buy all the small components on reels. It makes no sense
to setup the machine some hours to populate 10 pcbs only.

Cheers,
Chris

[mmcintosh]

Really amazing work hats off! What else are you considering adding? Something like the Moitessier HAT with AIS/GPS ...... ? Looking forward to following your work.

Hi mmcintosh,

i have made two expansion pcbs to be connected to the 30pin connector.

One pcb with a Antenova GPS, MPU9250 IMU and LPS25 barometric sensor
and a second pcb with NMEA 2000 and 0183.

Both pcbs have a 0.1" 4pin header for I2C interface while the nmea pcb
have an extra header for 1-wire.

I have ordered 10 of the LCD panels last week and today I will order the pcbs.
Most of the LCDs are already taken by friends. Currently I don´t know if we
have leftovers.

For the pcbs I can definitely say that we will have much more than needed.
Because the assembly will be in the Maker-Space near Munich. They have
a pick and place machine and a vapour phase soldering machine.

It is not the best machine but it works well for all the resistors and caps:
https://www.maker-space.de/article/2142....tomat.html

For this I need to buy all the small components on reels. It makes no sense
to setup the machine some hours to populate 10 pcbs only.

Cheers,
Chris

Still you have gotten so far so fast pretty amazing. If you do end up with any extras I would gladly have one. My local maker space and there are a few https://www.openworksbmore.com/ I use because they have Juki sewing machines and I am working on new canvas presently. To get all of this in place so quickly is well very impressive. If in the end you can do an open source how that would be great too never know how it can move forward.

Cheers

[BellaX]

Hi all,

in the meanwhile I have spent two days in the maker-space to populate 10 pcbs. Phew, a lot of work!
Together with a friend i set up the pick and place machine to place all the small components like
resistors and capacitors.

But we have 74 different parts and unfortunately a lot of them can not be placed by the machine
because we don´t have all of them on reel. (too expensive for us) This means we had to put around
500 parts by hand. 

Some insights from the 'production':

Solder paste printing:


Pick and place:


There were some fixes from the first prototype like mixed up LVDS signals, resistor value changes
and some small improvements but i have changed the battery backup switcher completely without
further testing. So I was a little bit nervous during bring up. 

But the end of the story is: everything is working like expected! I didn´t found any problems. 

The enclosure is another construction site. I have milled an enclosure from a wooden 25 mm MDF sheet.
After sanding and spray painting with MDF isolation filler and top coat it looks good. But this is a lot of
work and does not work for more than a proof of concept.

Currently I am looking for polyurethane foam like Ureol with density of 0.65 g/ccm. This material
should be much better for this project.

Here are some pictures from the prototype:

My little workshop:


MDF front:


After spray painting and installing the pcbs and cables it looks very cool and nobody
believes me it is made from wood:

[/url][url=https://share-your-photo.com/30e2a9e4d9]

These are the main functions the board provides:




The membrane for the keyboard is made of Trotec 'TroLase', a 0.2 mm film with black core
and white topcoat that can be lasered away easily. A python script scans the pushbuttons and
sends the keyboard inputs to OpenCPN. 



Some work to do:
- rear plate
- sealings
- holder for my boat
- NMEA pcb testing
- GPS board needs assembly and testing
- IR remote control testing

Cheers,
Chris

[CianH]

Wow that looks amazing Chris! a few questions,

Are there any i2c breakouts ?
Are there any spare gpio's other than i2c? or plans for daughter boards etc?
Do you plan on open sourcing the project or plan on selling any of the other boards ?

I've thought about doing the same as you but incorporating something like the dAISyHAT onto it, not really put much time into it though and you seem to be flying!

Keep up the fantastic work
Cian

[abarrow]

Awesome work!

[BellaX]

Wow that looks amazing Chris! a few questions,

Are there any i2c breakouts ?
Are there any spare gpio's other than i2c? or plans for daughter boards etc?
Do you plan on open sourcing the project or plan on selling any of the other boards ?

I've thought about doing the same as you but incorporating something like the dAISyHAT onto it, not really put much time into it though and you seem to be flying!

Keep up the fantastic work
Cian

Hi Cian,

many thanks!

I made two daughter boards, one with NMEA and one with GPS, IMU and barometric pressure sensor.
Both of the daughter boards have a 4pin 0.1" header to connect additional I2C breakouts.

The Sensor daughter board has an additional header for 1-wire.

These are the pinouts of the 30pin FFC connectors:





Actually 9 GPIOs of the 200pin SODIMM connector are not used. But I think it makes no sense to break
them out to another header. 

The expansion header has 12 GPIOs plus one USB channel from the 7-port USB Hub.
And if you are not using the keyboard pcb this header has another 17 GPIOs.

Regarding AIS, I have no plans to add an AIS daughter board. The RTL USB Stick fits 
perfectly if the enclosure is removed:



If you or someone else want to add an AIS daughter board i will share the electrical 
and mechanical specs and schematics needed.

I have populated 10 main boards and 6 are already taken by friends. So 4 are happy
to find a new place. 

Cheers,
Chris

[TinyCruiser]

Beautiful. Far more elegant than what I have been puzzling together all week. And I really want a bigger touch screen than the Pi7. I think it only needs a sunshade (plastic top and sides, fold in and down when not in use) and side mount nuts (tilt up-down) for an arm mount yoke to have it able to be mounted anywhere.
I want one.......

PM sent!

[BellaX]

Beautiful. Far more elegant than what I have been puzzling together all week. And I really want a bigger touch screen than the Pi7. I think it only needs a sunshade (plastic top and sides, fold in and down when not in use) and side mount nuts (tilt up-down) for an arm mount yoke to have it able to be mounted anywhere.
I want one.......

PM sent!

Thanks! I will add some pictures soon. In the meanwhile I have made an acrylic front sheet with
passepartout backprint (plotted adv. film normally used for cars) and an aluminium back plate
with gasket.

And I have added a 5 mm, 20x20 mm silicone heat pad to transport the processors heat directly
to this aluminium back plate. Works like a charme! I can run the Pi at 80 % power without getting
the overheat symbol. 

Btw. I made a moveable holder for my 7" Pi display two years ago:







I have an acrylic 'door', don´t know the english name for this. The 7" display sits
directly behind of it and i can control OpenCPN with the remote control through
the acrylic plate. Very useful if you have bad weather!

Chris

[Sea-and-Sea]

This looks like a work of art Chris. I realise this post is a little old now, but how did this end up? Did it work as expected?
Colin

[BellaX]

This looks like a work of art Chris. I realise this post is a little old now, but how did this end up? Did it work as expected?
Colin

Hi Colin,

I have shown the 10" plotter on the Boot 2020 tradeshow in Dusseldorf/Germany. We have had our own open source booth there
showing OpenCPN, Signal K, AvNav and a lot of DIY electronics, CAN bus, ESP32 and so on.

We got a nice contact to a company that wanted to mill the enclosure from aluminium. They ordered a 30 mm aluminium sheet
the same day! But unfortunately some weeks later Corona showed up and the project was cancelled.

By end of the summer with low Corona rates we were planning to be on the Boot 2021 tradeshow because we had the opportunity
to be part of the tradeshow itself. Means we have not to pay a booth and get much more space! But again Corona ruined it.

I was working on a new pcb with the Raspberry compute module 4, NVME flash drive, improved graphic chip and so on. But I stopped
this project when it was clear that the Boot 2021 tradeshow will not happen.

In some weeks the Maker-Space II here in Munich will open and they bought a brand new pick & place machine. More feeders, bigger,
faster, more precise. I talked with the Maker-Space guys and they are thinking about to invest in vacuum casting. 

A waterproof enclosure for the display is an ongoing problem. I have milled the enclosure for my plotter from a 25 mm PU sheet.
This means milling time around eight hours for one enclosure!  This makes no sense even for a small batch of displays.

Currently I have some projects to finish but then I am thinking to finish the CM4 board. Hopefully I can populate the pcb with the
new pick & place machine in one pass, this would be a big step forward.

During summer I have renewed my 7" plotter with a RPi 4 and SmartiPi touch enclosure. Some 3d printed parts, my IR-Remote
control and running AvNav: https://www.segeln-forum.de/board194-boo...%C3%A4use/

Chris