NodeMCU 12E extention prototyping kit shell by victorzzt

Last crawled date: 3 years, 3 months ago

For the shell, please attribute to https://makerfairehongkong.com/2018/ ,it was designed for expanding the connector using Servo style, giving it separate 5V power (to address the diode burn when drawing 5V from the NodeMCU board). Thanks to Dr. Clifford Choy from The Hongkong Polytechnic University for the support of the development.
A brief description is here: https://wiki.melissakronenberger.com/bin/view/Main/Past%20works/ESP8266%20Docking%20Board/
In order to use this, you will need to also fabricate the extension board for NodeMCU-12E from here: https://bitbucket.org/victorzzt/nodemcu-v3-docking-board/src/master/release/
How to solder is in dockingReadme.pdf
BOM is attached in excel, but links for purchase might be outdated.
The one with ACPWM is an example how you can expand the shell to include something else.
Unfortunately I just moved so I do not have a ready made one, and I currently do not have the means to fabricate anything. May upload one if I make one in the future.
Future work:
It seems to be in the United states, ESP32 is not that much more expensive than ESP8266 boards. So for small scale prototyping, judging by the functionality/cost difference, it makes more sense just to use ESP32 based system.
Possible directions: extention board using ESP32 module / extention board using ESP32 Dev-Kit. As ESP32 based Dev-kit has too many varients, I will probably pick the one which is most used.
ESP32 is slightly larger than ESP8266 (except for HUZZAH like build that sacrifice some of the IO pins) so it will be challenging for the form-factor.
Servo like connectors might not be a desired feature, need to find a more customizable arrangement. Also in the current system, only external supply will be able to power the servo connector's 5V power lane, a more flexible power which allow USB power but can protect from the diode from burning will be preferred. A self-latch-power button circuit with soft-power-off function can be integrated.