2018-04-16 (M) ModuKey

First generation boards arrived. These boards were designed before the first big revision, so they lack many of the features, like labeled pins, but they should allow most of the big bugs to be worked out. The simplest board was had space for various connectors for making remotes with the power and serial lines. An RJ11 connector was soldered to the board, but the footprint didn’t match perfectly. There was no surface-mount headphone plug but after looking, a surface-mount device would be a poor choice. The aviator plug hole was the wrong size so the hole will have to be expanded.

Measuring the aviator plug chassis-mount device

Mounted RJ-11 socket

Switches were mounted to a few of the breakout boards so they could be used for testing. These did not have an IO expander onboard. They were given female header sockets so test wires could connect to them easily. After soldering, it was clear that switches should be soldered last since they can make it impossible to add headers.

Switches soldered to 2x2 and 1x2 breakout boards

When the boards were revised, the IO expander’s address pins changed from a set of three header pin holes to three pads identical to the surface-mount pads of the ICs used. A few of the pads were soldered together with a hand iron in order to test the feasibility of setting the addresses by anyone with a soldering iron. The results were good and with only a fine-tip soldering iron, it was possible to solder adjoining pins together without unwanted bridges. No magnification was used either.

Intentionally bridged pins

ICs were soldered to some of the boards. No solder paste was available so thin electrical solder was used. A few boards and chips were ruined because of improper tools. One board was completely assembled with an IC and switches. Two others were only given an IC to test if they can talk to a microcontroller.



ICs soldered to boards

The rest of the posts for this project have been arranged by date.

First time here?

Completed projects from year 1.

Completed projects from year 2.

Completed projects from year 3.

Completed projects from year 4.

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2018-03-17

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