Season’s first snowfall & PCB design sitting by a fireplace

I started writing this post sitting in the sun on our rooftop, looking at the green hills in front of me and finished it sitting by the fire after enjoying season’s first snowfall (although we waited for almost a month). And even now, there is a raging storm outside. It seems climate change and season shift is something that won't be corrected so easily. But I am still glad to be sitting in a cozy room on a mountain and not being in the chilly smog-filled Delhi NCR.

We moved to this place in December 2023, and it was especially cold that year. Also, being on the top of a hill meant full sun during the day and constant cold winds at night. With unreliable electricity on rainy days, we knew that the first thing we had to build was a room heating system that doesn't depend on electricity. A wood stove/fireplace felt like the ideal choice, but like always, Arpit wasn't satisfied with the desi designs and decided to design and assemble it himself. The whole process i.e. 3D design, sheet metal cutting, welding, multiple testing etc. stretched over 2 years ( and this time overlapped with the arrival of our newborn adding more sleepless nights and chaotic days). There were so many hits and trials and small issues and so many days when our room was filled with smoke, but in the end, it was all worth it. This winter felt cozy and we could work late beside the fire, without layers of blankets or worrying about power outages or chilling winds which somehow manage to enter our closed house. We plan to work on some better room heating alternatives once we build our house in the coming years.

As decided, we open sourced the circuit design of the plasma torch height controller ( It’s on our GitHub page ). All our time last week was spent in discussions with vendors for a client project & writing project proposals, and so the documentation for the THC has been postponed.. I will try to add more details to the project in the upcoming days.

Our purpose for making these designs open source is not only for others to build a similar product, but it’s also for those who may be searching for circuit designs for specific concepts like reading high voltage, optical fiber communication, display etc.

Maybe I will discuss more about the hardware and firmware of this THC in future blogs, but for today, that's it from my side. Thanks for reading and will meet you next weekend.