Category making things

Metering Power Consumption by two v2.0 RS232 to Eaton Leonard Interfaces
(Click for more photos (photo gallery retired)…)

Well, they are done. I worked for quite a while last night and for a good part of the day today, and all of the first production run of v2.0 RS232 to Eaton Leonard Interfaces is complete. They have all been bagged up and are sealed in a box waiting for me to deliver them in about a week and a half.

If you go to this page (photo gallery retired) you can also see a bunch of images I took of all the boards tiled together. These would be good for the background of product literature or something.

Missing LEDs and Power Connectors Only

Well, these are coming along nicely. All I have left to do tomorrow is install the LEDs and screw terminal power connectors, then I can wash and dry them and begin testing. Hopefully every single one will pass. They should, unless there are bad parts.

If they don’t, I’ve got a few spares of each part, just in case…

I also need to get some exercise tomorrow. I’m not yet sure what I’ll do, though… Maybe roller blading, maybe just a walk in a park. At least tomorrow is forecasted to be fairly nice weather-wise.

20 PCBs with Resistors.

Nothing special here, I just fitted all the resistors to the first production run of the v2.0 boards I’ve been working on. I’ve got about 1.5 weeks to get them finished, so I’m probably going to do one step per night. Tonight was resistors, tomorrow ICs, then… well… maybe I’ll do more over the weekend. After ICs will be the caps, then the transistors, then the pin headers and RJ45 jacks, then the LEDs and screw terminals. Then washing, drying, testing, packaging…

…or, something. :) It’ll all get figured out / built / tested in time.

RS232 to Eaton Leonard Interface v2.0
(Bottom View)

Well, there it is. That’s one of the first pieces of the RS232 to Eaton Leonard Interface v2.0, part of the lot of five I assembled tonight. They are bagged up and ready for delivery so that the customer can test them out before the inital install (at one of their customer sites) at the end of the week. The PCBs were ordered last week as a prototype run and they arrived today, so I got to work as soon as the UPS driver showed up with the box.

Everything went great with the boards, and the v2.0 design meets all its goals. It is simpler than v1.0, easier for me to assemble, uses fewer parts (both count and type), and can be configured to talk to itself. Yep, this one can act as either end of the cable. Thanks to this the jumpers can also be configured so that a simple loopback can be plugged into its EL connector and all the electronics on the board can be tested outside of a production environment. (This makes testing loads easier for me as well.)

So, that’s about it. I’ll be assembling the rest of the first run this week and weekend and hopefully delivering them early next week. Yay!

My partially completed Millett Hybrid Maxed PCB

That right there is what I did tonight… Well, I assembled as much of the Millett Hybrid Maxed PCB I reasonably could. I still have to get a few more parts for the board (headers, fuses, fuse holders, resistors), wash the board, fit a few more parts, build the enclosure, and a few other things. Then it’ll be done.

I also have to send his parts for it, which I’ll do after I get the rest of the parts.

Tomorrow I should received the PCBs for the RS232 to Eaton Leonard Level Shifter v2.0, and I’m going to try and build five tomorrow night. Hopefully they will work, work well, and be acceptable to the customer.

Photos from the beer fest, bricors’ place, and other things coming later. This was a good weekend. :D

Ceramic Caps

Today a received a gigantic box from Mouser containing all the parts for the RS232 to Eaton Leonard Level Shifter v2. This includes over 100 DIP ICs, 110 BC557 transistors, shunts (jumpers), tantalum capacitors, screw terminals, LEDs, 2×3 headers, RJ45 connectors, resistors, and the FETs for current reversal protection.

I also finally bought a lead bender, so that the bends in resistors will be a lot more accurate / consistent.

Assembling these 25 is going to be a chore, but will also be worthwhile. Yay!

Now, to go to Meijer and get extra foodstuffs for the weekend.

SPI Decoder Hackery

Here’s a design I just threw together for a hokey SPI decoder so I can watch what is going on internally in the Honda Music Link. It’ll read both SPI lines and turn it into RS232 data on the PC. Basically, the software on the PICs will just data out of the SPI buffer as it fills (and triggers an interrupt) then write that out the UART. Should work, I think. The only big problem will be the decoding software on the PC.

Anyone want to write up some decoding software for me? It should be easy to do… Just needs to watch a serial port (or maybe both) and decode packets as they come in. Hell, if you can write the framework for it, I can add the decodes as I figure them out.

(The point of this is to basically reverse engineer how Honda talks to CD changers.)

Here is a write-up on ordering extremely cheap PCBs from questionable Chinese PCB fabricator Gold Phoenix Printed Circuit Board Co.,Ltd.

There’s a couple projects I may use them from. I just need to edit some files and decide on a solder mask color. (I’m not designing this myself, just changing the documentation bits of the design slightly.)

There is something odd to me about ordering $50 worth of optocouplers. I’ll be receiving many, many tubes of chips soon. It seems I’ll be making 25 of the v2.0 boards, with at least four (and most likely more, if not all) of them by the end of next week.

Also, who knew that jumpers and pin headers cost so much? Well, at least for RoHS-compliant decent quality ones. <shrug> It all works out in the end, though. Also, it’s a good thing I ordered that hundred pack of antistatic bags.

Now, to finalize the PCB and order it. (I might do that tomorrow, as I can order the boards as late as 9:30am and still get the order in before the salespeople arrive.)

Also, the Clarkston Union has raised their prices. A full order of portabello gratin is now $15.