Beachmaster Files

[ivconic]

[Olly]

KiCad files

In case anyone is interested, here are the KiCad schematic and PCB design files for the project.
These were saved with KiCad Version 6.0

beachmaster_kicad.zip

Feel free to adapt or amend these in any way you wish.

Regards

[ivconic]

I assume there are lot of members on forum to welcome that too.
Cheers!

[Olly]

I did on top but forgot to do on bottom layer, some of them!
Do you really think that so little copper missing will affect pcb S/N ratio?
...
Your work is certainly more meticulous and tidy and better.
My "scratch" is incomparable. I did it almost all manually, over the bitmaps.
I could import gerbers into Sprint Layout 6 though.
But this time I wanted to spend more time, so I made few bitmaps and used them to draw over.
Sprint Layout can automatically generate ground planes. Yet I did all manually by drawing.
So later I can remove some parts if needed and edit if needed.
But I do it purely as a hobby, to kill time in these boring winter days.
...
But there is another particularly absurd reason!
We have a colleague on the forum who is quite weak-minded and not quite on his own.
It is his habit that every now and then, for no apparent reason; convinces others not to use Sprint Layout in any way,
at any cost. It will be clear to you who he is, when he spots this post. Like a monkey when sees a banana through a fence;
such will be his reaction to what I have written here!

...
Joke aside, redrawing is my favorite hobby on winter afternoons.
And I was interested in your work, so I decided to do it.
...
BTW I forgot to say: GREAT WORK indeed!
Cheers!

Thanks for the positive feedback - much appreciated.

Sprint Layout looks very nice indeed, but I'm a Mac user I'm afraid so it won't run on my system. I use KiCad for all my hobby work and so far I'm quite happy with it as it seems to do everything I need and the price is right .

I suspect that as you suggest, the thermal reliefs won't really add any discernable noise, depending on the thickness and length of each relief trace they'll probably only add around 0.25 milliOhm to each connection point so I'm probably being a bit paranoid when it comes to the noise. I was mainly concerned about the grounding scheme for the front end and its 1000x gain where even a few microvolts of noise become millivolts after amplification.

If you'd like the KiCad PCB file to play with let me know and I can post it on the forum as well.

Regards

[ivconic]

Nice edit, I do like the way you've added thermal reliefs to the plane connections.
I did consider these but figured the slightly better noise characteristics would be worth the increase in soldering difficulty.

I did on top but forgot to do on bottom layer, some of them!
Do you really think that so little copper missing will affect pcb S/N ratio?
...
Your work is certainly more meticulous and tidy and better.
My "scratch" is incomparable. I did it almost all manually, over the bitmaps.
I could import gerbers into Sprint Layout 6 though.
But this time I wanted to spend more time, so I made few bitmaps and used them to draw over.
Sprint Layout can automatically generate ground planes. Yet I did all manually by drawing.
So later I can remove some parts if needed and edit if needed.
But I do it purely as a hobby, to kill time in these boring winter days.
...
But there is another particularly absurd reason!
We have a colleague on the forum who is quite weak-minded and not quite on his own.
It is his habit that every now and then, for no apparent reason; convinces others not to use Sprint Layout in any way,
at any cost. It will be clear to you who he is, when he spots this post. Like a monkey when sees a banana through a fence;
such will be his reaction to what I have written here!

...
Joke aside, redrawing is my favorite hobby on winter afternoons.
And I was interested in your work, so I decided to do it.
...
BTW I forgot to say: GREAT WORK indeed!
Cheers!

[Olly]

Nice edit, I do like the way you've added thermal reliefs to the plane connections.
I did consider these but figured the slightly better noise characteristics would be worth the increase in soldering difficulty.

[ivconic]

An execrise...

[Olly]

Circuit Notes

I would have preferred to include this note in the first post, but can't figure out how to edit a post.

Regarding the 'Pinpoint' Pushbutton switch, the PCB was designed for a switch which has common as the center pin, in which case the NC pin should be closest to the bottom edge of the board. The switch I received has the 'NO' pin at the center so in this case the switch should still be mounted with the NC pin closest to the bottom edge of the PCB, but a small jumper wire then needs to be soldered across the 'NO' and common terminals.

Regards

[MartinB]

Thanks Olly

[Olly]

Hi all, I know that there are a number of you who have expressed an interest in building this detector so to get you going I'm posting all the info I have to date.

The circuit description is mostly complete, but the 'build' part of the document is still very much 'Work in Progress'. Please bear with me, I'll update this as soon as I can.

In the mean time please note that this project is still in its infancy so issues and errors may yet still appear. Please let me know if you find any problems and all feedback will be gratefully received. None of this would have been possible without the pioneering work of the GURU's on this forum.

Beachmaster.zip

Regards