Anime-style portrait of Andrew Paton giving a thumbs up at his desk
Andrew PatonSenior Solar and Battery Design Engineer

About

Where solar, radio and microcontrollers meet

AP Design Labs is a small South Australian workshop where solar panels, batteries, microcontrollers, long-range radios and 3D printers all end up in the same project.

What I work on

Home solar & battery design
My specialty. I size panels, batteries and inverters to how a house actually uses power, not to a brochure.
Home automation
Making the house respond to the sun, the battery and the people living in it.
Microcontrollers
ESP32 boards programmed in MicroPython, built to run for months on a small battery.
LoRa & MeshCore
Long-range, low-power radio, and off-grid mesh networks that keep working when the internet doesn't.
CAD & 3D printing
Enclosures, brackets and mounts, designed and printed to fit the job exactly.

Putting it together

The interesting work happens where these overlap. Think of a solar-powered LoRa sensor in a 3D-printed enclosure, reporting its battery health to a home automation system, or a MeshCore repeater sized to get through an Adelaide winter on one panel. Each build is bespoke, designed around one problem instead of squeezed into an off-the-shelf box.

Complex ideas, explained properly

Everything on this site is written so a beginner can follow it and an expert still finds it worth reading. Plain language comes first, with the real numbers, schematics and code underneath for anyone who wants to go deeper. If something here doesn't make sense, that's my problem to fix, so tell me.

Get in touch

For questions, project ideas or corrections, email .