Electrical Engineering Student
This project hasn’t reached the state of a Minimum Viable Product, but I’ve learned a lot that may be useful for others pursuing similar builds. What follows is a writeup on what started as an Associate of Engineering capstone project and evolved into a winter-break tinkering project. I’ll walk through background research, product requirements, prototyping, …
Overview Starting in the summer of 2024, I collaborated with a startup providing portable power stations (PPS) for customers seeking backup power during grid blackouts. My hardware research background and interest in power systems made this opportunity a strong fit. After a series of exploratory calls and discussions, we came up with a Plan Of …
It’s been a busy season, but winter break has opened my schedule up to tackle this project. Previously in Part 2, I designed a PCB that incorporated a LiPo battery charging and boost conversion circuit to power a 5V microcontroller and downstream components. We left off with an alarming sizzle as the boost converter IC …
School had picked up soon after publishing Part 1 of this project, in which I built the first working prototype. With the semester winding down, I figured now was a good time to continue. In this segment, we’ll create a custom PCB for our previous prototype, then model and print a new enclosure for it. …
There are future improvements planned for this project, but in case it helps someone out, here is my progress. It’s also good practice in retaining what I’ve learned, which has been quite a lot. First of all, this is what we’ll build in “Part 1”: Initial Idea Having spent some time learning the basics of …