Those days…

I assume you guys also have “those days” when working on a project and everything that can go wrong…. goes wrong >_<…
I resumed my lightsaber project, and spent a day assembling a little module for it, what happened when doing that:
– at first the breadboard setup didn’t work, because the I2C dac i used now had a different address than the ones i used previously (took me a while to figure out because it’s a big project and didn’t know what was failing where >_<. at first i was afraid something went wrong with my recent arduino IDE & stm32duino files upgrade)
Then when soldering
– switched the MISO & MOSI ports on the sd card module -> desolder it & put it on correctly again (and a second spi module that was piggybacking on it too ofcourse -_-)
– Switched the 2 i2c devices, which i didn’t think would be a problem, untill everything kept crashing and after some debugging… i realised that i2c2 & spi2 are on the same DMA channels soo….. desolder both i2c modules, and switch them around -_-….
– Then it was still hanging, after looking closely i suddenly saw one of the wires of the spi flash chip had come loose >_< (why would the soldering be bad after having to desolder & resolder basically everything on this project? XD)

but somehow everything survived that abuse and by the end of the day i had a working module XD.

I’m impressed that after all the rework, no magic smoke escaped.

ahull wrote:I’m impressed that after all the rework, no magic smoke escaped.

Encountered another nice challenge yesterday: had a small tssop10 DAC chip i wanted to experiment with, and wanted to solder it on a tssop -> dip adapter board to play around with it. But when i started i noticed the pins were closer together than the pads on the adapter board… After some googling i found out it’s a tssop chip with the pins spaced 0.5mm apart, instead of the regular 0.65mm -_-.
don’t know if there are adapters to be found for such chips, but i now solved it by bending the pins a bit wider with a knife, and then soldering it XD.
It took me 2 tries, but it worked XD.

don’t know if there are adapters to be found for such chips, but i now solved it by bending the pins a bit wider with a knife, and then soldering it XD.
It took me 2 tries, but it worked XD.

Seriously? Why? Nevermind … I’m sure I would not understand.
Enjoy your agility while you are young. These days, I can barely see the legs on the IC and I rely upon 10x magnifier to solder chips properly to a board. I can do SMT with hot-air but I gave up point-point component wiring somewhere around 14 when I built my Allied RadioKnight Kit superhet shortwave.

“… bending the pins … ” that just hurts.

Ray

mrburnette wrote:don’t know if there are adapters to be found for such chips, but i now solved it by bending the pins a bit wider with a knife, and then soldering it XD.
It took me 2 tries, but it worked XD.

Seriously? Why? Nevermind … I’m sure I would not understand.
Enjoy your agility while you are young. These days, I can barely see the legs on the IC and I rely upon 10x magnifier to solder chips properly to a board. I can do SMT with hot-air but I gave up point-point component wiring somewhere around 14 when I built my Allied RadioKnight Kit superhet shortwave.

“… bending the pins … ” that just hurts.

Ray

i wish there were DIP variants of all IC’s, but when you get to more specialized ic’s… it’s all smd it seems -_-. ah well, my soldering is getting better and better doing crazy things like that :p.

Sand is cheap, plated metal pins and extra sized chip package are not so … DIP makes little sense in today’s mass-market, high volume production fabs. We hobbyists are enjoying out heydays now because of inexpensive production costs and “left over component reels” from large runs in China (and elsewhere.). Let’s enjoy this while we can – political forces are assembling as a dark cloud on the horizon and tariffs may again make hobby parts unbearably expensive or simply not available.

Ray

purl one, knit one, missed one.

zmemw16 wrote:purl one, knit one, missed one.

Yesterday i made some basic code that sends I2S to the DAC, and it works XD
I hereby declare bending pins a totally valid option :p

racemaniac wrote:Yesterday i made some basic code that sends I2S to the DAC, and it works XD
I hereby declare bending pins a totally valid option :p

mrburnette wrote:racemaniac wrote:Yesterday i made some basic code that sends I2S to the DAC, and it works XD
I hereby declare bending pins a totally valid option :p