I saw this neat USB board the other day on OpenElectronics that is designed for use with the Pi Zero. How difficult would it be to turn this into a board that would fit in the extension bay on the uConsole? Making boards and such is a bit beyond what im comfortable with.
waiting on drawings to come out for uconsole boards - intent is to take cell modem outline cad drawings and add two USB port circuit design from devterm expansion boardā¦
something like that, yeah probably
iāve planned to do that ā sidenote, i need to learn soldering
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get a good soldering iron preferably one that has an adjustable tip temperature and replaceable tips . If not then get a small one for electronics parts and a larger one for soldering larger things like power regulator terminals (~30 watt and a ~60watt maybe. full disclosure I do not attempt to do surface mount although I know people who do ā¦ If I can get the board drawn I may try to find a source that will mount the surface mount parts or go with thru hole solder parts although they are harder to find. also I breadboard the circuits before I build them because I donāt want to have to redo some partā¦
SMT soldering isnāt as bad as you would think. I have been doing it for ages. I do teach and in one of my classes I teach students how to design and build their own surface mount PCB with some sort of processor on it. As for soldering iron, I have been happy with the HAKKO FX888D. I have been using the T18-I tip (I think). I have even shot a series of the students and posted them on YouTube. Look me up under markatlnk . The KiCad example shows the board design and the ā307 S22 14ā video is where I hand solder the board. The big issue is use lots of flux. There is another set on the RP2040, but that needs a stencil and uses reflow.
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Thanks - you have an excellent YouTube channel - I have subscribed. will watch those videos as opportunity provides.
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thanks yāall
(iām drunk 20 chars 20 chars)
There are some more really good soldering tutorials from iFixit. It is a 10 video series that goes through just about everything. Here is a link to the full playlist: iFixit Microsoldering with Jessa Jones playlist
That is impressive work, but the uConsole board doesnāt need anything nearly that tiny. Inside your cellphones, things are ridiculously small. They also use BGAs (ball grid arrays) that are much harder to work with for a hobbyist. If you are designing your own board, you can stick to larger parts without much of a problem. For resistors and small caps, you can use 0805 parts, if you need smaller even the 0603 isnāt too bad. But the 0402 on down get hard for me. I can do one here and there, but I have some 01005 parts and they look like something that falls out of a pepper shaker.
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good advice - Iāll look at the schematics when they come out but there are schematics for the DevTerm EXT daughter board where they interfaced two USB ports that plugged into the EXT card and that is where I will start maybe it will be possible to pick substitute parts that will be larger and easier to solder. my issue is I donāt see a Bill of Materialā¦ so Iāll do some diggingā¦ thanks for the encouragement.
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Once you select the parts you want on it and have a basic schematic, I might be able to help a bit. It would make it easier for me if you decided to use KiCad for the design so anyone could modify it for their own needs. I have my own uConsole on order and have a DevTerm (CM3) to play with now. I might want to build up one. If you want me to take a look at your schematic, I am willing to do that when you get that far. Just noticed your user name. The HC11 is a bit of an old processor, it came out in 1984, that sort of dates you. I did lots of Z80 stuff back in the day.
you never forget your first development board! few old guys aroundā¦ I have KiCad - downloaded it to do some of my own board work only to decide to build a circuit ādead bugā style once I realized the space hog of a pcb.
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More information on another branch the uConsole speaker circuit must patch through the daughter board for the 4G/LTE boardā¦ so a new port USB board - would have to incorporate the speaker function - in with the USBā¦ we probably need to wait till the design comes out for that functionā¦