1/22/2026 8:24 PM - Day 1 to 4

Day 1

HEHEH!! Day 1 and I finlly jumped into it 🚀
Started working on this ultmate survival tool idea today and honestly felt really excited about it picked the ESP32 as the MCU to begin with because I already know its powerful and has wifi and bluetooth which could be useful later I alredy have a few componets in mind too stuff like BME280 load senors and maybe more later depending on how this goes
Opend up KiCad and started drawing the schemtic first because I felt that getting the core right is more important than thinking about PCB first the first thing I did was drop in the ESP32 I initally thought the ESP32 S3 wasnt avalible on LCSC and that kinda demotivated me a bit but then I searched more and turns out I was wrong found ESP32 WROOM 32E N4 in stock there so I swaped the MCU to that one and continued
After that I added a BME280 to the schemtic as well since environment sensing is a key part of a survival tool and this was my first time properly connecting one from scratch so I had to double check the datasheet for pins and power
heres the schemtic so far take a look 👀

Day 2

So I did the USB Type C power input conection today for my ESP because without power nothing really works I took help from the Custom Devboard guide and the ESP32 datasheet for this and this part was kinda confusing because there are many pins and standards in USB C
I cant figer out where to conect the D+ and D- pins properly at this stage and that made me a bit stuck but I didnt want to stop progress so I decided to leave them for now and come back later once I understand more about it
Take a look at the Schemtic now:

Day 3

Yeah!! You see the schemtic it doesnt really look like a day 3 schemtic but yeah it is because most of the time today went into thinking and searching rather than adding components
So today I tried to serch for the load senors but couldnt find any SMD ones easily and that made me rethink whether I should even add them at this stage or not so ill think upon it later and not force it into the design
I also tried to figer out that D+ and D- pin thingy again but couldnt come to any solid conclusion because USB C seems simple but actually isnt when you go deep The major thing done today is the conection for the BME280 senor!!! yeah its a great achivement for me because earlier I wasnt very confident with sensor connections but now I feel better about reading datasheets and wiring things correctly :-

Day 4

I did it!! One of my freind (teammate in another project) told me that I had to use the USB to UART feature for trasmission of data between the MCU and the coding device via the Type C port and this was like a light bulb moment for me
After this my D+ and D- problem finaly came to an end because I understood that the ESP32 itself doesnt directly handle USB data like I thought and I used the CP2102 USB to UART conveter for this (as my freind suggested)
I also kinda engulfed some stuff inside those boxes so the schemtic looks more systamatic and organised because earlier it was starting to look messy and confusing and yeah it looks cooler too and is easier to understand
Look at the schemtic now:-

1/22/2026 8:42 PM - Day 5 to 10

Day 5

Yo!!! So today I was just serching for load senors on LCSC and I found one perfect fit like really perfect for my application I just loved it because it matched what I needed and didnt look too complex

While doing this I also realised that the mcu I am using ain't available anymore which was kinda annoying but I pivoted immediately instead of forcing it and wasting time

So when I was goin through the datasheet of the load senor I found out that for it ill also need an AC to DC conveter which I didnt expect at first then I searched a bit more and also found a perfect one for the project which made things easier

But yeah I kinda strugled to understand why there were different pin namings in the datasheet of both the componets and this confused me a lot initially because it wasnt obvious which pins matched what

All these things like finding the componets importing symbols footprints reading datasheets and cross checking pin names took around 30 mins!!!!! which doesnt sound much but felt like a lot mentally

Day 6

Hi Guyzzz!!! so today I did much work compared to previous days

You can see that the load senor part is done in the schemtic now and yeah it was the most dificcult part of the schemtic till now because of multiple pins power requirements and understanding how it actually outputs values

But waittt!! is there somthing called a Magnetic Field Sensing Unit in the schemtic??? well YEAHH there is!!!

I added a very small 2*2mm compass kinda thing to my schemtic and yeah its really cool this will be used for navvigation and direction finding which makes sense for a survival tool 😎

This also made me realise how many different sensors can be added to one MCU if planned properly

Day 7

Well today I searched up almost the whole internet just to find a good GPS and a display for my purpose and this took a lot of time because there are way too many options and most of them are either too expensive or too complex

Unfortunatly I wasnt able to find the GPS that I liked but I did find the display

Its the EA DOGS164W A and I went ahead and did all the display conections in the schemtic but the footprint is yet to be added because I wanted to first be sure about the part

Ill think about the GPS thingy later on because I didnt want to rush that decision 😅

Day 8

so I kinda changed the screen yeah I didnt really like that one after looking at it more so I chose this one instead

Good thing is I already have this from digikey so I know its real and reliable

Now I have to order from both LCSC and digikey which means double shipping fee and yeah that hurts 😭

But there was no option because LCSC had only like 4 5 screens and those werent even good or suitable so I had to do this anyway

This taught me that sourcing parts is also a big part of hardware projects

Day 9

I kinda made a plan, yeah I’m used to making plans after doing most of the schematic lol ik that’s not ideal but josh doesn’t come asking! 😅

I’ve decided I’ll be making more than one version of this because adding everything in one go felt risky

This is version 0 (v0) with the least features just to get something working

The features for v0 are:

GPS Tracking

Estimated lasting of Food and H2O

SurvivO’meter (kinda predicts the number of survival dayzzz 😎)

This helped me feel less overwhelmed about the whole project

Day 10

Yeah!!! So I finally completed the SCHEMATIC! Hooray! 🎉 (Nearly 4h work)

IDTS I should be this happy, but I completed it in just 10 days since starting this build which honestly feels like a big achievement for me

Btw, I also made a harsh decision: I’m gonna use the GPS Neo 6M module and hand-solder it because designing the RF stuff for antennas myself would be too difficult and risky for this version 😅

I also learned that the GPS uses UART which actually helped me a lot because it let me add the weather sensor (BME280) onto my board again without conflicts

I took extra time to make the schematic look nice by organizing all the components and showing their values which I had hidden before because I thought it ruined the look

Now I realize that “Understandability” matters too especially if someone else wants to look at my design so values stay visible 👍

1/23/2026 6 AM - Day 11 to 15

Day 11

Well today tbh it was like a very non frustating intresting hopeful day yeah totaly (SARCASM ALERT!!!)

I kinda almost finished the footprnts of most of the componets today except the swtiches and buttons which yeah I relised today that I didn’t even add them before so that was fun

After wasting alot of time I finaly found a swtich that felt okay for me mechanically and size wise but then obvioulsy there was no KiCad modle for it why would there be

I was super tired at that point not even gonna lie but I didn’t completly give up somehow (small win ig)

Then randomy I thought why not try EasyEDA2KiCad so I opend the guide on the Highway website and bro it just blew my brain

I’m really not a sofware guy at all and then I kinda wasted all the remaing time just arguing with ChatGPT My cmd was full of erors terminal also same thing just erors everywhere

At that point I realised that converting footprints isnt as easy as I thought and needs proper tool understanding

So yeah after that I was like yeah nope
LET’S JUST RETIRE FOR THE DAY

Day 12

So today I quickly tried to find some decent switches again and yeah I actually found them with proper footprnts and symbols which honestly felt unreal after yesterday

I added two pushbuttons wired to two GPIOs which would show whatever answer the user gives for the question on the screen basicaly YES/NO buttons so this also made the UI logic clearer in my head

Then I decided to straight up ditch this battery holder and switch to a smaller battery because like the battery holder was legit bigger than the whole PCB itself which made no sense

So I just kept it aside and worked on the input side of things instead and yeah here’s how it turned out

This taught me that physical size matters a lot more than I expected while designing PCBs

Day 13

Hmm honestly today was kinda uneventful since I spent the whole time just routing tracks and this was more patience based than thinking

I did grab the 3D model for my ESP32 though and finally got it to sit in the right spot after dealing with a really odd glitch

No idea what broke but the X and Y axes were behaving like they were merged or something which made placement super confusing

Eventually it worked and seeing the 3D model placed correctly felt kinda satisfying

Day 14

I roughly sketched out the sizes of all the parts first just to figure out how everything should sit on the PCB

While working on the PCB I ended up moving a few components around to make routing easier and cleaner

After that I routed almost the entire board and things finally started to look like an actual PCB instead of a mess

At this point the PCB is pretty much finished and the only things left are adding a proper battery connector and removing the switch that was hooked up to the MCU

This stage really showed me how planning placement early saves time later

Day 15

So yeah today was also just a regular day overall but mentally very draining

I worked on routing the differential pairs after finding out that their trace lengths have to be properly matched which I honestly didnt expect to be this painful

I basically struggled the whole day and kinda messed up the tracks near the Type C input and fixing that alone ended up eating a lot of my time

I had to reroute multiple times and learned that critical nets should be planned first instead of doing them at the end

I also tried adding some 3D models but couldn’t really get it done because the day was way too hectic

And yeah today the finished the pcb thingy from tmr will work on BOM hehe...

1/23/2026 7 AM - Last journal

So yeah finally I’ve decided upon most of the things and the total project comes to around 100$ now the BOM has been optimized as much as I could without compromising reliability

At this point I’m basically waiting to build this cool project myself which honestly feels exciting and scary at the same time and I think it will be a really nice learning experience overall

I’ve been really curious about making this project from the start and even tho this is not my first PCB I still dont want anything to go wrong because this board has many parts and a lot of things going on

So I cant really risk adding somthing that might not work or that I’m not confident about especially in this version

Its not that I want to limit the project or avoid adding more features its just that I want this version to actually work properly and be buildable without too many surprises

Any remaining amount over the budget I will be paying on my own and I’m totally fine with that because I really want to see this project come to life

Through this project I learned a lot about schematic design component sourcing USB to UART stuff differential pair routing footprint headaches and also that planning and documentation matters a lot more than I thought

Overall this project taught me way more than I expected even before actually building the PCB and I’m excited to continue from here