Preheater

BGA REWORK STATION

Advanced Open-Source BGA Preheater Controller with Web Interface, Multi-Zone Heating, and Thermal Profile Management.

📖 Overview

BGA Rework Station is a fully open-source project designed for controlling professional and DIY BGA/PCB preheating systems.

The controller supports multiple heating zones, thermocouple monitoring, fan control, and a modern web-based interface for managing the entire process directly from a browser.

The project is suitable for:

• BGA rework stations
• PCB preheaters
• SMT/reflow experiments
• Electronics repair workshops
• DIY thermal control systems

✨ Features

🔥 Multi-Zone Heater Control

• Control up to 5 independent heaters (time-proportional switching, no zero-cross / phase control)
• Separate heating zones
• Real-time power management
• Suitable for IR heaters, ceramic heaters, hotplates, and custom heating systems

🌡️ Thermocouple Monitoring

• Support for 6 MAX31855 based thermocouples and ds18b20 sensors over 1 wire
• Real-time temperature acquisition
• Multi-point PCB temperature tracking
• Accurate thermal feedback for safe BGA processing

🌀 Fan Control

• PWM two fan control support
• Automatic or manual cooling operation
• Active thermal stabilization

🌐 Web Interface

Built-in web application accessible from any browser.

Features include:

• Real-time temperature monitoring
• Heater control
• Fan management
• Profile editor
• System status monitoring
• Live thermal charts

💾 BGA Profile Management

• Save and load BGA heating profiles
• Custom temperature curves
• Repeatable rework processes
• Profile storage directly in the system

🛠️ Hardware Capabilities

📂 Project Structure

├── docs
│   ├── datasheets
│   ├── img
│   └── pdf
├── hardware
│   ├── gerbers
│   ├── gerbers.sh
│   └── kicad
├── README.md
└── software
    ├── backend
    ├── frontend
    ├── Makefile
    ├── mock
    └── secrets.yaml

Layout

• backend/ — reserved for the real ESP32 (Arduino) firmware, stage 2
• frontend/ — Preact + TypeScript web UI (WebSocket telemetry + REST config)
• mock/ — Python mock of the ESP32 backend (aiohttp; full thermal simulation)

Usage

make deps      # install npm + python dependencies
make dev       # run mock backend (:8000) + vite dev server (:5173)
make test      # pytest for all REST/WS endpoints and the simulation
make lint      # ruff + eslint + tsc
make frontend  # production bundle (later embedded in ESP32 flash)

Useful during development: MOCK_TIME_SCALE=10 make mock runs the thermal simulation 10x faster than wall clock.

Contract

• WebSocket /ws: telemetry pushed every 500 ms, events (step_done, profile_done, operator_needed, alarm), commands (start, pause, resume, stop, confirm, set_fans).
• REST: GET/POST /api/profiles, GET/PUT/DELETE /api/profiles/{id}, GET/PUT /api/settings, GET /api/status.

The real ESP32 firmware (stage 2) must keep this contract unchanged.