Prototype circuit board is designed and ordered from OSH Park. For anyone curious as to what it’s looking like, here’s the board detail link.
It’s a relatively simple ESP8266 breakout board, with a scant handful of components — it runs the power through a 3v3 voltage regulator, so the source voltage can be significantly over that — for example, you can supply 5v via a USB cable or plug three AA batteries into a holder and wire that in to provide 4.5v (or 3.6v if they’re rechargeables, I suppose). There’s two resistors for the pull down and pull ups necessary to get the ESP8266 booting into the correct mode. There are spots to attach header pins to connect a FTDI for programming. And — of course — the relevant bit. There’s a spot at the right to attach a reed switch, which can detect the presence or absence of a magnet (attached to the door or frame) — which will let us know when the door is opened!
I really enjoy circuit board design. It’s a relatively new thing for me, but my current obsession is making one-sided boards, with no vias or anything necessary on the reverse. Just … seeing how compact and efficiently I can run the traces and place the components. For the curious (or those who can’t quite make out the traces behind the purple solder mask above) here’s what it looks like with just the copper:
Thoughts, critique, feelings, opinions? Let’s have ’em!
🍻
Hacker Home Security 
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