2019-08-19
How do I put this … the latest revision of the board works. The only thing that I haven’t delved into I2C, but everything that I have tried so far works. Completely. Which is actually extremely rewarding, since this has been a slog for a year plus. Some previous posts to catch you up: So much failure More failure Everyone on the fail train Well all of the problems have been addressed. Vic’s Power and Read more…
2019-08-04
Finally success. FINALLY. I finally have inrush current management under control. In case a refresher is needed, here are a few posts discussing the problem. https://www.simkus.com/2017-10-01/ https://www.simkus.com/2018-07-21/ https://www.simkus.com/2018-08-24/ To recap: Attempt #1 – relay. When the relay would turn on, the power supply would dip causing havoc. Attempt #2 – PWM drive of the low side. Electrical current is like love – it finds a way. By disconnecting the low side (negative rail), the positive Read more…
2019-07-30
I have been playing with the latest revision of the VPSB (Vic’s Power and Serial Board). I was hoping that this would be the last revision, unfortunately the fact that I crewed up the power supply footprint will prevent that from happening. I got the pin order backwards. This is the worst kind of failure since I can’t blame anyone else. Anyways, here’s the potato-cam picture: You can see the power supplies in the Read more…
2019-07-13
I had a touch of panic when I received a text from DHL that my PCB order from Elecrow would be delivered Tuesday, July 16th. Tuesday July 16th, you see, is when I’m scheduled to be flooded. The following is the river gauge closest to where I live. Tuesday July 16th is when we’re scheduled for a flood event thanks to tropical storm Barry. The even more disconcerting prediction is for the Comite river. They’re Read more…
2019-01-04
Long story made short: more failure. One very basic failure was mixing up SSOP footprints with TSSOP footprints. I have a laundry list of excuses for screwing it up, but at the end of the day a lesson has been learned that should have been learned many times over in the past – don’t try to hand-wave things away. Experience is the name we give to our failures, I suppose. A more subtle failure was Read more…
2018-12-16
Looking back at the post history, and it appears that I am quite the Chatty Cathy this month. Lots of progress being made. First order of business: I screwed up the naming in a bunch of places. Instead of referring to the expansion board as VSPB (Vic’s Serial and Power Board) I referred to it as VPSB (Vic’s Power Serial Board). Well it’s easier to rename it than to change all of the references, so Read more…
2018-12-15
So on a BeagleBone Black running Linux, how can one tell if a device is enabled. Lets say we’re trying to get UART2 and UART4 to work. Those are both serial ports. How can one tell if the serial ports are enabled (or just a singular – serial port)? Well because we pretend to be familiar with Linux we do a ‘dmesg’ and look for a serial something of some sorts, yes? That sounds reasonable. Read more…
2018-12-13
The VSPB (Vic’s Serial and Power Board) has been delivered from Elecrow, populated, and reflowed in my reflow toaster. Other than mixing up TSSOP and SSOP footprints (that’s a whole different post) everything I have tested so far is functional. Gratuitous picture: I am super digging the white solder mask.
The new VSPB (Vic’s Serial and Power Board – catchy, eh?) is working very well so far. That will be a different post. This is about configuring the BBB (BeagleBone Black) the Vic way. During the development of this project, a new version of Debian was released for the BBB. Since I want to be hip and with the times I decided to upgrade to the latest version. Debian Stretch IoT is my poison of Read more…
2018-12-09
Because I can not leave well enough alone, I decided to add insulation to my reflow toaster. Bellow are the results of the “learn mode” of the reflow controller. Basically what the controller does is ramp the heaters up and down and measure the temperature change vs time vs relay on-time. For more details go here: http://www.whizoo.com/intelligent . The hope was that as more insulation was added the oven score would improve. This is Read more…