Testing the Weather Station Devices

Testing the Devices#

Today consisted of verifying that the sensors worked when attached to the PCB. This is part of the bring-up process to confirm the PCB, power delivery, and peripherals are all behaving as expected. Everything went well, except for one slightly annoying issue.

OLED Screen Testing#

I connected the 1.3 inch OLED screen to the PCB. Thankfully, it was already soldered and simply needed to be plugged into the socket on the board, which matches the pin layout of the OLED module.

The screen is SH1106 compatible, so it works with the Adafruit SH110X Arduino library. As the ESP32-C3-SuperMini on the board is supported by the Arduino ecosystem, it was straightforward to compile one of the example programs in the Arduino IDE and upload it.

Once uploaded, the OLED displayed the familiar Adafruit logo and ran through the test routines, confirming that the display is functioning correctly.

UART Testing#

The next stage was testing the UART. This involved connecting my USB serial monitor dongle to the UART pins on the board:

• GND → GND
• RX (board) → TX (serial monitor)
• TX (board) → RX (serial monitor)

I then used PuTTY to monitor the serial output after selecting the correct COM port and baud rate.

I used the usual LED test example, which also includes serial debug output. Everything worked as expected, and the debug messages appeared correctly in the terminal.

BME280 Temperature and Pressure Sensor Testing#

The temperature sensor testing was a bit of a mixed bag—not because of any issues with the PCB, but due to the sensor I received.

The BME280 is a very common sensor, and there are Arduino libraries specifically designed for it. However, when I ran the test code, the debug output indicated that the device was actually a BMP280, which is a less capable variant that only provides pressure data.

After checking the order and packaging (which were labelled as BME280), it’s clear there has been a mix-up somewhere along the way.

I believe I used a proper BME280 module in a previous project, so I may cannibalise that for now or simply order replacements from a more reliable source. That’s a problem for tomorrow.

Not a failure—just an unexpected issue, and exactly the kind of thing you want to catch early during bring-up.

UDPI Friend#

I also ordered UDPI Friend boards for both my workshop and home lab. These will allow me to program the ATtiny1614 microcontrollers I picked up previously.

This is partly a thank you to Adafruit for providing the libraries I used during testing, and it also replaces the homemade Arduino-based programmer I was using before.

Summary#

Overall, the board itself is behaving exactly as expected, which validates the PCB design and assembly. Power is stable, peripherals are working, and communication interfaces are functioning correctly.

The only real issue so far is the incorrect sensor, which is easily resolved.

If you are working on custom carrier boards, sensor integration, or ESP32 prototypes and need an experienced engineering partner, let’s discuss your project at Protoworks (NI).