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#electronics

233 posts167 participants22 posts today
Public
Dr David Mills

Hey you!
Yes you. Have you checked the batteries in the thing you haven't used for a while? No? Do it now, or as soon as possible.

This toot brought to you by a bunch of leaking Duracell and Poundshop Kodak batteries in some kit I was going to take to work today.

#battery#electronics
Continued thread
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C.

The best part? My cost for manufacturing the boards and shipping them to me in Canada (from China), with all applicable duty and taxes included, brings them out to about $1 per board.

I may try other designs at some point. But I can't see myself going back to the uber-expensive ones that are commercially available.

I can't wait to try one of them!

3/3

Screenshot from a Printed Circuit Board (PCB) layout program showing the design of my perforated prototyping board.
#MakeDontBuy#design#custom
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C.

When building electronics project for permanent use - i.e. after testing on a solderless breadboard - you normally go to a #soldered perforated board of some type as a #prototype, or even for very-low-volume production.

There are different types of boards. I dislike "matrix" boards, which are just isolated pads on a grid, i.e. there are no connections between any of them. Some people swear by these; I swear at them.

I prefer protoboards that have multiple holes per pad (so you can connect multiple component leads without having to add an explicit wire jumper). If they've also got #busses - sets of pads that run the whole length or width of the board - so much the better!

Some are #crap: laminated paper PCBs where the pads lift off the board if you even try to desolder something you added. Row/column labels missing, or (like I found with some recently) that don't line up between the front and back of the board 😆 , or most egregiously, they don't actually show the pad pattern on the front of the board, so you have to keep flipping it to check your parts are correctly placed. One example below.

I have some from "BusBoard Prototype Systems" that I like. The SB4 is a 38 x 24 (912 hole) board that is #snappable into quarters. Two of the quarters have rows that are 4-hole, 2-hole, 4-hole. The other two are 5 2-hole pads. Both types have a single bus running along each of the 2 long sides.

But ...

1/x

A scan of the underside of a cheap perforated prototyping circuit board - "protoboard" or "perfboard" - showing its pattern of pads and holes, along with the brand/model name "Radio Shaek 2". :wink: This is a typical crappy generic Chinese board, made from laminated paper. The copper pads are very thin and the glue holding them to the board isn't great, so they lift off the board very easily when soldering, or especially desoldering. The holes aren't very well centered in the pads. There's no soldermask, so it's easy to get accidental solder bridges. The board is browish tan, and has an 18 x 24 grid of holes, so 432 holes total. There are 2 continuous busses running up the middle of the board. On either side are rows consisting of (from outside to in) a 2-hole pad, three single-hole pads, and a 3-hole pad.
#electronics#hobby#ProtoBoard
Continued thread
Public
Nielso

Does any #electronics nerd have an idea what could be wrong with this funny old display? #fedihelp

The upper line has some segments that are always on everywhere, like a letter K without the first vertical line.

The second line is missing the lower right half vertical element everywhere.

It should read “ENSONIQ ESQ 1…” and “AND SEQUENCER…”

This is the display board of an #Ensoniq #ESQ1 #synthesizer, the first edition (metal case).

Voltages are all in spec. I tried cold spray on the ICs without an effect and I resoldered some stuff that looked dubious. But still.

Second image shows the chips apparently controlling the display.

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