Solar Powered Garden Irrigation System

as Having achieved a Layout and prepared some Gerber Files the time came to get the bare PCB manufactured. I have to confess to going overboard somewhat with this part of the process. There are so many PCB manufacturers and little to choose between them. Should I consider delivery time or price as highest priority? I finished up ordering from 2 Chinese and One Europrean manufacturing houses, the results can be viewed in the Picture Gallery. As far as I can tell at this stage there is little to choose between them in terms of quality however Elecrow were the quick test, PCBNPI had the most reactive support and Eurocurcuits provided some useful additional verification and visualisation tools. All except the latter sent more boards than I had ordered so I have plenty to ruin on my route to mastering Hotplate SMD reflow soldering technique

Initial attempts to use Eagle for CAD too successful. Decided to try Diptrace and this proved to be more intuitive, may be it's just my age!

Sketched out the schematic. Probably not the final design but will help prove the concept.

Settled on having four major blocks on the PCB. A Solar Charge Controller, a Boost Converter, an H Bridge Driver for the Solenoid and the ESP8266 Wireless Microprocessor. tot her with a suitable 3.3V Regulator and other supporting components. Most of the circuitry relies on the Manufacturers' design data and Application Notes. nothing really original.

Used the MCP73871 for the Solar Charge Controller (I had the Adafruit version so why reinvent the wheel), the TPS61175 for the Boost Converter , the BD6221F for the H-driver, the ESP826-07 for the Micro and a TPS77533D for a voltage regulator.

Now for preparing a suitable layout. Not as easy as you might think. Texas recommendations for the Boost Converter are a challenge