Smart Home Thermostat
Home comfort, with confidence.
Backstory
As a side project, my co-worker, Cole, designed a board for a smart home thermostat with an Arduino Nano as the brain, a CrystalFontz OLED screen, and a pretty slick set of board to board connectors from the logic board to the power management board. I build some plastics to surround this assembly. He's in the process of assembling and testing the boards, and I will print the parts once we are ready to move forward.
Fabrication
I took this project as an opportunity to practice DFM of injection molded plastic parts. Close attention was paid to wall thickness, screw boss dimensions, press fits for the magnets in the corners, and overall flushness and finish.
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I added a heavy draft on the exterior walls to account for an eventual matte texture to be added, in the case that these are ever made at volume. All other drafts were kept conservative.
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As you can see as pictured, the two halves separate for easy access to the Micro USB port on the Arduino Nano. This made an interesting opportunity to constrain the two in an equally user friendly way, ideally requiring no tools. The magnets in the corner hold the two halves together with around 7lbf, and the rib features around the edges constrain the cover and take the load path away from the board-to-board connector.
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Pending a successful board bring-up, we should have a unit in hand for mechanical testing and tweaking if necessary.