Got my new PicoCalc kit last night and this morning made an unboxing and assembly video, posted to youtube… The assembly is very easy, but there were two spots where I had to think a little bit.
I want to say, I’m really impressed with what went in to making the kits… very polished!
Ya, the speaker orientation is the weakest part of the manual, and I probably spent the most time debating it. It was hard to see in the assembly picture, but it appears the contacts are facing towards the outside of the casing on both sides, so I went with that. I know others have also done them that way, but given there’s 2 pairs if contacts for both speakers, does anyone know for certain if the orientation actually matters?
Well wow. Now that I look at the manual again, i can see i tiny indication the contacts go to the outsides. But I saw the red sticking out on the left sides of the speakers in the manual and thought that was a direction indicator. Anyways, when I looked at the main board (quickly) I saw 2 pads on either side of where the speakers go. and traces running between pads, so I figured it didn’t matter. When I run the MP3 demo, I hear sound coming out of both speakers.
I don’t really think the orientation matters, since there are pads on both side on the PCB, but of course having them closer to the outside and the screws will give a “slightly more” solid connection.
I’m going to put some info in the video description, I saw this thread here about the same issue with the gameshell where it’s said it doesn’t matter electrically.
I decided to just upload a new video, here’s the link with more words about speaker orientation.