Comments of Ilo Nanpa (Toki Pona Calculator) - Release Announcement and Technical Details

josh
Jan. 25, 2019, 8:37 p.m.

I admire this project! I also love designing ultra-minimal things. If you want to go father, I think you can eliminate all of the LED resistors and use careful PWM timing to limit the current instead (http://ognite.com). you can also use the internal bandgap reference to measure the Vcc voltage, (https://wp.josh.com/2014/11/06/battery-fuel-guage-with-zero-parts-and-zero-pins-on-avr/) which gives another analog input source for free (this would be great for the en/wika switch which could put an LED in series with the Vcc giving both an input and an indicator). I also think you can get rid of one of the VCAP capacitors. I also think you can get rid of the decoupling capacitor if you switch to the 128HZ clock, use the low slew on output pins and and are careful about not switching too many lines at once. I also think you might be able to replace the buttons with touch pads on the PCB which would really lower the BOM and assembly costs. Finally I think you could switch to a CR2032 battery on the front of the PCB to make it single sided and all SMT which would dramatically reduce assembly time/costs. LMK if you want help with any of these. I would love to see this as a kickstarter!!! twitter: @bigjoshlevine




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