buildfor.life

Blog

Engineering

Fill Resistance: Seeing Where the Copper Actually Gets Hot

A KiCad plugin that computes DC resistance, current density, and via ampacity across copper pours, so we stop guessing where a board runs hot.

Engineering

LVSolarBuck Milestone: Full Power at 97.36% Efficiency

The solar input module hit its designed maximum power and worst-case efficiency point for the first time: 97.36% at 45 A out, 48 V out, 120 V in.

News

Visiting CMU STeP at the Regional Science Park

Ice, Auu, and Alex visited the Science and Technology Park at Chiang Mai University to discuss a potential collaboration, and possibly a new home for our office.

Engineering

The Evolution of Our Smart LED Lamp

From green round PCB to square aluminum heatsink: a look at the design iterations behind our long-life smart LED lamp.

News

Infineon and Arrow Thailand Visit Our R&D Lab

We welcomed representatives from Infineon and Arrow Thailand to our Chiang Mai R&D lab to discuss our GaN-based 48V MPPT converter design.

Engineering

Reverse-Engineering Our Spectrophotometer with Claude

We used Claude to sniff and decode the USB protocol of our HPCS 6500 integrating sphere, replacing the vendor software with an open-source Python driver.

Engineering

How We Track 290,000 Components with InvenTree

Our inventory system uses InvenTree, barcode scanning, and automated part import to track 833 unique parts and 290K total components.

Engineering

Our Automated Test Bench is Live

We built an automated efficiency test system for our LVSolarBuck MPPT charger using open-source SCPI drivers and Claude.

News

Meeting with German Honorary Consul Sebastian-Justus Schmidt

We hosted Sebastian-Justus Schmidt, German Honorary Consul of Chiang Mai and founder of Enapter AG, at our R&D facility.

News

When the Ping River Came to Our Lab

The October 2024 Chiang Mai flood hit our interim lab with 50cm of standing water. Here's what happened, what we learned, and why vendor lock-in is dangerous.