ESP32-A1S Radio on a Board - Part 1

In this video I create a board for the SDR I previously did in this video:

The github repo containing the kicad files (and a PDF for those without kicad) is here

The QRP-Labs bandpass filter I mentioned is here:

Mr Carlsons lab technique for double sided boards

My Earlier video using "fab in a box"

0:00 Intro and Board Walkthrough
1:37 Schematic walkthrough (apologies again for the low piched hum)
4:22 Build Order
6:18 Power supply circuitry on the board and tested
8:30 A problem with the RX/TX lines
9:50 RX/TX lines fixed
10:38 ESP32-A1S installed on the board
11:30 First program flashed
13:28 si5351 installed and tested
15:20 Wrap up

[yakovdavidovich]

Love the videos, always watch them, thanks for making them! Recently, the audio when you're screen sharing has some distortion; not sure what's changed, but if you haven't noticed it maybe it's worth looking at.

[arduinoguru]

Very great video, I thought about the same idea for long time, and you now make it work.

[TheEmbeddedHobbyist]

Great old school Pcb, when i first started in electronics the pcb's we used were double sided and via's were made with rivets. we would spend hrs sitting at a drill press pressing in the rivets and folding the ends over before soldering them. Must have beed a good process as these boards went in to equipment fitted in the cockpit of jet fighters. And we would never see them back unless they wanted an upgrade made.

[KennethScharf]

If there is a ground plane on the other side of the board, you could have drilled a large enough hole through the ground pad area to allow you to melt some solder onto the ESP32 ground pad from the other side of the board, and then connect it to the ground plane on the board. I've done this with similar chips.

[MrNoorino]

your explanation is very good and detailed, so far I have processed an SDR SSB radio with transmitter and receiver, I uploaded the video on the youtube channel. I am using an ESP32 A1S ES8388, from the factory there are several types of I2C pin placement, one of which is on pin 33/32 like yours, but the other I2C pin is on pin 18/24. Thanks for sharing.

[jeroldponko]

Ian,
Nice video and project. After watching your first video on the ESP32-A1S, I bought a bunch of the ESP32-A1Ss and had some breakout adapters made so that the WiFi antenna would be unobstructed in case I ever wanted to use the WiFi. I may try your PCB layout if you get this working. I take it that you aren't using the Etherkit Si5351 Arduino library.

Regards,
Jerry, AC9NM

[SUDAYSHANKAR-oiji]

Can you tell me where you got the footprint for the esp32A1s?

[HitAndMissLab]

great video!
what software are you using for programming ESP32? And do you have a video on how to program it?

[markslab]

Nice Work! How do you create the tables in KiCad?

[RAUK]

Thanks for the video. In your experience is there any practical difference between the "double balanced" Tayloe mixer (the one used in this schematic) and a "regular" one (when the channels of FST3253 are paralleled and the input signal is referenced to the ground)?

[mgeo]

This is awesome :) I'm 1/3 of the way through watching! I am keen to see what you end up doing!

[AragonDubs]

A big up! Thanks for your great explanation about! 73 from Spain