1/6/2026 - The plan

we have got a christmas town at home which is mostly powered by batteries which has a lot of different batterie holders.

right now it got:
3 3V battery holders
2 4.5V battery holders
12v 300mA plug
this will all need to be replaced by one powerplug.

i also want it to be "smart" in the way that i can remotly put it on and off and to do this i want to connect it to home assistant so i need a MCU which is capable of that so i decided i want to use a ESP32 since i can then use ESPHOME

1/11/2026 2 PM - Buck converters

I made a buck converter in kicad:

I then looked all the parts up on lcsc to see how much it would cost to make one:

the part cost isnt bad but shipping is quit expensive so i didnt think this would be possible to do but then i read on slack that you can combine youre JLCPCB and LCSC orders shipping so it will be way cheaper

1/11/2026 3 PM - made the schematic

I made the schematic for the PCB on which there are 4 groups which i can power seperatly with a esp32 via a NPN so i will be able to turn on the houses seperatly and also the streetlights.

1/11/2026 5 PM - routed the PCB

I layed out the PCB starting with the two buckconverters since these have capacitors which need to be close so i first layed out these and routed them then i layed out everything around these and routed the rest.

1/11/2026 7:04 PM - Decided on the parts

I decided on all the parts, using the JLCPB tools plugin so i could easily select LCSC parts for the PCB. And the powersupply and ESP32-C6-Zero i found on aliexpress.
LCSC parts:
€ 3.71 + 3.00 (handeling fee)

Aliexpress:
€ 8.61

JLCPCB:
€ 3.01

total: € 18.33 ≈ $22

1/11/2026 7:37 PM - made the github page

added all the files to a github page and added a BOM and made a README to show off my project

i also saw that the latest picture i ad in a journal is the banner picture so.
banner picture:

2/3/2026 - ordered and got all the parts

I ordered all th eparts like two weeks ago and everything is finnaly here, i did make a bit of a mistake in my BOM cause i forgot to add the shipping cost of LCSC luckily i got a top up for this so i was able to order everything.

I havent soldered small SMD pars before so its going to be challenging to solder everything luckily i had to order more then i need so i can practice a bit first. I didnt think 0603 would be so small, it looked decently big on kicad but i didnt realy have anyting to compare to but i think i can solder this. i choose 0603 since the internet said this was very doable to solder by hand but next time im probaly going to go to 0805 since its better solderable.

2/6/2026 - Soldered one half and tested

I soldered one half of the board, unfortuantly i lost one of the AP63200 i was trying to see in which orientation i should solder it unfortuantly my pincet slipped a bit and the AP63200 went flying and i couldnt find it anywhere. I then soldered the other AP63200 on the board but since i was a bit cared of losing this one i didnt look carefully enough at the orientation and i blew this one up so im going to have to order some new ones since i dont have anymore.