In previous posts, I already showed the making of a soldering station. Now I’ve taken it to the next level and made a battery-powered one. The result is a very concise box which can easily be taken for soldering jobs in the field.
The case
I found a cheap aluminum case at banggood. It had just enough space to fit all the stuff.
My brother helped me with the milling for the TFT screen and the connectors and buttons.
Battery voltage meter
Since this device is going to be powered from a 3S LiPo battery, it would be useful to have an indication of the battery level. I constructed a simple voltage divider using a 470K and a 300K resistor. This scales 12.833 volt to approximately 5V, which is the maximum level for the Arduino analog pin A0.
Wiring
All the wires are soldered directly without using connectors. I also modified the standby functionality, which is now operated by a momentary push button. First, I mounted the screen in the case. Then, I pulled the power wire through the case and soldered it. Also, to make sure there is no contact with the case anywhere, I covered most of the exposed contacts in electrical tape and also put a piece of carton underneath the PCB.
Code
I slightly modified the code of the non-portable station. It now adds a voltage display and toggles the standby-mode with the momentary push-button. Also, the TFT screen was 1 or 2 pixels smaller than the previous one I had, so some of the text was shifted slightly to the left. The code is available in a branch on my Github repository.
It works
Look, I’m soldering:
Awesome idea.. So What is the approximate dimensions of the case that you are using? Where did you buy?
There is actually a link in the post: https://www.banggood.com/Black-Aluminum-Electronic-Enclosure-Case-Project-DIY-Box-75x70x24mm-p-1018199.html
So it’s 75x70x24 mm. It was a very tight fit.