Ember - A hot plate controller powered by USB-C Power Delivery
Hi, I’m Nathan, an aspiring engineer who likes to tinker with hardware. Earlier this year, I started making hardware/electronic projects through various Hack Club programs. It was perfect, but most, if not all, of my projects were being withheld due to high customs and import fees, so I wanted to change that. Most of the price was actually assembling the PCB, and looking around the internet, I discovered the wonderful invention of the hotplate, and that I could make all of my PCBs myself for more than half the cost. Now, while I could have bought one on eBay, I decided to take up the…
What it does
In the maker’s words, at launch
Hi, I’m Nathan, an aspiring engineer who likes to tinker with hardware. Earlier this year, I started making hardware/electronic projects through various Hack Club programs. It was perfect, but most, if not all, of my projects were being withheld due to high customs and import fees, so I wanted to change that. Most of the price was actually assembling the PCB, and looking around the internet, I discovered the wonderful invention of the hotplate, and that I could make all of my PCBs myself for more than half the cost. Now, while I could have bought one on eBay, I decided to take up the challenge of making my own (because why not) and to make it as functionally portable as possible, so Ember was born. I started reading how hotplates work and looked around the internet to see if anyone had made one, and I stumbled upon this repository (https://github.com/ikajdan/reflow-hot-plate). It was basically what I wanted to make, but reading through, I found that although it went up to 210 °C, the hotplate size was rather small. Also, it needed an external DC jack along with USB-C to be able to control/monitor it from a laptop. Features/Specs: - USB-C Power Delivery up to 100W (20V) using TI's TPS25730D - STM32WB55CG microcontroller with Bluetooth support - Large(ish) 120mm x 120mm flexible heatbed for big PCB reflow (JLCFH) - Dual temperature sensing with MAX6675 thermocouple and PT1000 RTD - OLED display with rotary encoder for easy control and preset management - NFC support (because why not lol) - Gate driver for precise PWM heatbed control - Current and board temperature monitoring for safety - 32MB Flash memory for graphics and data storage - Portable design with custom acrylic / nylon case If you want to see the complete journal of how I made it and all of the design decisions I made, you can check it out here: https://blueprint.hackclub.com/projects/1701 Here’s the GitHub repo for anyone interested in making their own: https://github.com/notaroomba/ember Thanks to Hack Club’s Blueprint for sponsoring this project!
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