ESP8266 Community Forum

Hey all!

I'm new to esp8266, relatively new to electronics, but I making an xmas present for my family and I want to create a custom PCB to make production a bit easier (I'm making 8 "things").

Anyway, I'm wondering if there are any special things to consider related to the esp8266 when I'm creating a pcb. For example, I had already planned on sticking the little antena-bit off of the end of the PCB (in large part because it will save on space, but also I imagine it might help with the signal?).

I'm wondering if there is anything "special" that I need to make sure to do/not do in my pcb design. I don't know enough to know what types of things I might even be talking about.. but I'm guessing there might be some "gotchas" that I wouldn't have thought about.

Thanks for your tips/help/advice!

Hi,

I also don't have much experience with PCB creation but recently did a PCB using an ESP8266, and honestly, it worked out of the box! I've reused am ESP12E module for ease of use, if you want to use the ESP8266 chip without using a ready module it might be more complex and I cannot really help.
Here is my website, you can see the PCB and find the Eagle schema and board file on my GitHub (link on the website)
http://www.esp8266color.com/hardware/

Adafruit has released their eagle files for their ESP8266-E12 "Huzzah" board, so it could make a nice starting point for a design if you are using an E12 module.

https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit-Hu ... eakout-PCB

The main things are to eliminate any ground planes or other conductors under the antenna area of the module and make sure you have some "bulk" capacitance close to the 3.3V supply pins for the ESP8266.

--- Graham

==

Thanks for both of your replies, super helpful and very much appreciated!

Question; when you say "bulk capacitance near the 3.3V pins", can you explain a bit more about what you mean?

(keeping in mind I only very slightly know what I'm talking about..) I had heard that it's a good idea to add capacitors around the voltage regulator, and place them physically close to the Vcc pin on the esp8266, so I had come up with this:



Does this seem reasonable? Or am I totally missing something?

Thanks again to you both!