Py32 Development Board

A modular board made for smalland cost effective projects.

Motivation

This whole journey started when I wanted to make gifts for my friends after winter break. I recent bought a bulk pack of piezo buzzers sand wanted a wearable that plays a little custom tune.

Originally,I planned to use something like an ESP32 or an Arduino AtMega. But, after running some calculations,he cost of making 20 or so of these units proved prohibitive. After some research into low cost microcontrollers,I was in between Ch32 by WCH and Py32 by Puya. I eventually settled on Py32 due to its easier programming pipeline.

What is Py32?

The Py32 Series is a line of microcontrollers by Puya based on the ARM architecture. At the time of this projec each chip was about $0.01 which makes integrating microcontrollers into small projects like this (where a full size microcontroller would be overkill) much more feasible.

First Design & Challenges

The first design incorporates the py32 chip directy onto the board with three sound channels.

Howevever,he biggest problem with this design is the limited iteratbility; any changes made to one part of the board requiresentire redesign of the entire board.

Fizzy Board

The fizzy board is designed to fix the iteratbility problem of the first design. Instead of connecting to the peripherals directly,it exposes GPIO which can then be connected to a motherboard. The fizzy board is meant to be a much cheaper replacement to the arduino nano.

LN24C01

The LN24C01 is a smaller form factor version of the fizzy board (about the size of a keyboard key) although with less on-board memory.

This board is fully modular,and can be extended by connecting one or several to a motherboard.