u/Interesting_Plant558

Built this smart ambient lamp as a hobby project using an ESP32-C2, custom PCB, my own IoT cloud backend, and Android app.

Wanted to treat it like a real consumer product instead of just a prototype, so I designed the hardware from scratch and sourced a sample enclosure online.

Current features:

WiFi controlled

Alexa + Google Home integration

Mobile app control

RGB mood lighting

OTA firmware update support

Right now Im experimenting with:

Mood/adaptive lighting

Sleep/wake routines

Music reactive effects

Planning to improve the diffuser and make the lighting smoother in the next revision.

Would love suggestions from the community:

What features would make this actually useful daily?

Any cool lighting effects or automation ideas?

Should I add sensors (motion, temp, ambient light, etc.)?

Built with a lot of late-night debugging and coffee 😄

Been working on this for about a year and wanted to share what I learned - both the hardware design decisions and the mistakes.

The idea was simple - instead of a separate carbon or plastic frame, the PCB arms are the airframe. An ESP32 sits at the centre as the flight controller. Four brushless motors clip directly to the board corners.

Using Arduino and esp32.

#arduino #esp32 #drone

Been working on this for about a year and wanted to share what I learned - both the hardware design decisions and the mistakes.

The idea was simple - instead of a separate carbon or plastic frame, the PCB arms are the airframe. An ESP32 sits at the centre as the flight controller. Four brushless motors clip directly to the board corners.

What worked:

1. Integrating the structural and electronic functions into one board saved significant weight

2. Copper reinforcement around the motor mount holes handled vibration better than I expected

3. Soft mounting the MPU-6050 IMU made a huge difference to flight stability

What was harder than expected:

4. PID tuning took about two weeks of test flights to get stable hover

5. Weight distribution matters a lot - ESP32 module placement affects centre of gravity

6. Trace routing around the arm cutouts needs careful planning to avoid stress points

The firmware:

7. PID loop for pitch, roll, and yaw stabilisation

8. MPU-6050 IMU integration

9. WiFi telemetry streaming to a browser dashboard

10. All written in Arduino C++ - open source on GitHub

The drone is part of a larger embedded learning kit I've been building - but happy to answer any questions about the PCB design or the flight controller firmware specifically.

Anyone here built an integrated frame PCB before? Would love to know how you handled the motor mount stress points.

I'm Sathish, founder of ANU Electronics. After 4 rejections and months of back and forth with Kickstarter Trust & Safety, CoreStack is approved and live.

What's in the kit:

1. 5 professional MCU boards (Arduino, Pico 2, CYD, ESP32-CAM, STM32)

2. Custom ANU PCB Drone - I designed this myself, the PCB is the airframe

LVGL touch UI - 8 projects on a 2.8" display

3. Edge AI offline - 10 demos, no internet, no cloud

4. 30+ components in a custom foam tray

Super Early Bird starts at $99 - limited to 100 kits.

Happy to answer any questions about the hardware or the campaign journey.

As a hobby I made a smart lamp on my own using esp32 c2 with my own IoT cloud and android app. I took it very seriously to develop like a product so designed my own pcb and got the sample case from online.

I made it to work with Alexa and google home

Trying to add mood based colour lighting.

Any suggestions to improve it and any new features suggestion.