For my Hack the Holidays, i was trying to make a Christmas tree Earring. It did get stuck in for almost an eternity, but it did arrive, Then i kept it procrastinating because i was working on my Connect 4 Game. But yesterday, when i set up my soldering station (I have a tiny room so its a portable setup) i decided to solder the earring too. Now, this was the first time i am making a PCB with a chip antenna. In my Light Up your life, i managed to make a Inverted F antenna, but there i had the liberty of the PCB size. This one, the PCB is small like around 40x20mm, so it had to be chip antenna. I had many NRF52832 and chip antennas in my drawer which i bought and never used. I was fighting against many factors that can make the PCB not work -
- Old components may not solder well
- Incorrect Design of Matching network components
- Incorrect PCB Routing including deviation from the 50Ohm Impedance.
- ESD Damage
- Random Silly mistakes from my end.
This is a two layer board and based on Kicad's impedance calculator i had used nearly a 3mm wide track for the 50Ohm impedance path. In Hind sight thats half the size of the NRF52 Chip itself.
But Against all odds. one of the boards worked unconditionally. The second was not showing up the BLE beacon. It was a example program from Nordic. But assuming a cold solder, i took it to my university and blasted them with hot air to flow them with a good flux and boom.. The beacon worked. I got a more than 10m range with them. That's the farthest i could go without losing Line of sight in the room. Was so excited that i had to share this.
Now on to more things..
