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Archive for the ‘DIY.’ Category

MSOP10/TSSOP8 – DIP adapters — they’ve finally arrived

December 17th, 2009

I’ve waited almost 8 weeks… and finally the reward ;-)
And I’ve already managed to solder the LT1618 boost converter chip to one of these. Compared to soldering TQFP-32 packages this screams for solder paste and a hot air station. You need patience and flux… LOTS!

This needs a very steady hand. Even with a quite pointy [...]

robert DIY., Electronics., PCBs 'n stuff. , ,

Who needs cheap MSOP10/TSSOP8 to DIP adapters ?

October 16th, 2009

Hi,
I’ve been planning to build a prototype driver for the Seeedstudio LED module (1, 2) for quite a while, but I just cannot get MSOP-DIP adapters that are reasonably priced. The cheapest single one I could find was 2.50€! The LT1618 boost driver chip I intend to use only comes in a MSOP10 package, and [...]

robert DIY., Electronics., PCBs 'n stuff. , ,

IKEA SAMTID modification — part 2

August 19th, 2009

Not having the right tools is such a pain.
The modification I’m planning to do requires cutting 72 round 35mm holes into the white plastic foil that forms the Ikea SAMTID’s “head”. I tried to do that with a scalpel, but failed miserably. Getting holes in there is not a problem, but getting them to be [...]

robert Arduino., DIY., Electronics. , , , , ,

Jyetech AVR digital oscilloscope DIY KIT — trying to fix it – part 2

August 9th, 2009

Maybe you remember my last post about the Jyetech oscilloscope and it’s weird behaviour. Not all of them are strange, as the free replacement DIY KIT I received from them works fine. At that time I suspected a sick ATmega64 cpu and had all sorts of plans to detect what components might be bad.

Long story [...]

robert DIY., Electronics., Fix me. , , , , , , , ,

Jyetech AVR digital oscilloscope DIY KIT — trying to fix it – part 1

July 12th, 2009

The symptoms since a firmware upgrade (and downgrades, re-upgrades…):

strange characters on the display for SEC/DIV
system freezes
+/- buttons are ignored (but still work physically)
the ADC chip doesn’t get a CLK signal during a freeze

My theory:
The ATmega64-16AU is overclocked to 20MHz, which is a good reason for failure. But all the other KITs seem to work, so [...]

robert DIY., Electronics., Fix me. , , , ,