you must become ungovernable

Hidden PCB silkscreen art

Slide 2 of 2

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What you're looking at is a subtle artistic inside joke within the world of electrical and hardware engineering.

During the design process of PCB's, engineers have to map out the board's silkscreen (aka the nonconductive layer of apoxy ink, typically in white, black or yellow, that is used to indicate components, design, and test points). This is an essential part of circuit board building that is an integral part of the design process, serving as essentially a communicative manual to anyone servicing it, or something fun to find for teardowns. Think of it as a medical diagram to the board's meat and bones. It is layered on top of the solder mask which in turn protects the copper of the board from corrosion.

Many designers opt to put hidden messages, symbols or popculture references within the leftover/non-essential spaces as a fun way to connect them to their work. It's a piece of the artist within the art, and acts as a fun little real life easter egg to anyone brave enough to open up the tech housing it.

They don't serve any functional purpose to the board, but they sure are cool :)

Images and info sourced from flickr, r/hiddenpcbeggs, and pcbgogo

I have some Seeedstudio XIAO ESP32-S3 + WIO-SX1262 lying around, so let’s integrate it into my cyberdeck and give it built-in Meshtastic capability.

Meshtastic is an open-source, decentralized mesh networking system using LoRa radios for long-range, off-grid text messaging and data sharing without cellular or internet infrastructure.

First, designing the case to hold the Lora antenna externally, and another case to hold the modules internally. You can download the 3D files here.

Next, drilling a hole in the case to let the antenna cable into the case. The antenna case was mounted on the hard case using acrylic tape. It’s a surprisingly strong non-permanent bond.

This is the best placement for the antenna that I was able to come up with. The antenna can be folded down for convenient transport.

I didn’t want it to be on all the time, so I had to wire up my own USB-A to USB-C cable with a power switch to turn it on when needed. Used some male USB-A and USB-C breakout connectors and shielded 4-core cable.

Another improvement to my cyberdeck is wiring an external switch to the Mcuzone 5V5A Dual PD Power Supply module, so that it can be turned on or off as needed, while the powerbank can be left connected.

You can check out my post here on how to run the Mestastic web client locally.

Here is the list of parts I have used so far for my cyberdeck build. Many of the parts came from Aliexpress.

That’s it for this post. Hope it’s helpful in your own build.

rainbow trout 🌈

When I say editing software is getting dumber, this is what I mean.