At the moment, I've got a circuit partly working on a breadboard - I've just got to change some components to get it working properly, then I'll be building it on a vero board.
I've taken a look at the costs for doing short runs of printed circuit boards and I'm thinking about eventually heading down that path. I'm currently wondering if anyone else would also be interested in having such a board?
Current planned features are: ability to discharge both channels at the same time. Trim pots to adjust the current - adjustable from basically 0 through to 2 amps. Probably have a three position switch (and 3 trim pots) so that 3 different currents can be dialed in and you can switch between them without having to further adjust the trip pots. If there is sufficient interest, I'm thinking about 4 options for others to get them
- Make the PCB design available for others to order directly through their own choice of PCB manufacturer.
- Offer pre made PCBs ready to post to anywhere in the world.
- Offer kits including the PCB and all of the required parts.
- Offer a complete board ready for use.
The last option would be better for those that aren't confident with a soldering iron, but keep in mind that header pins would still need to be soldered to the charger to be able to do external discharges. A total of 5 solder joints would need to be made - 2 for each channel plus the raw 5V header pin to power the circuitry on this board - the ground connection would be made through the FTDI pins already on the board.
I haven't done up an estimate of costs at this stage - I'll wait to see if this is of interest to anyone first!