Month: February 2015
Drawing out a pin out helps
Code breakout is ready!
- The wizard’s magical solder-goo
- Some solder goo the wizard used.
- Goo under the microscope. Tiny tiny solder balls suspended in flux!
- James’s wand! Tip: place some goo on the thermal pad, and use that to get the solder on the pads.
- Baking oven! Temperature profile spanned around 70-95 degrees C in ~15 minutes.
- Inside the oven.
- James did a visual inspection to check the contacts under the microscope. Next, I tested for shorts. We ended up shorting VDD and RESET.
- Attempt#2 at grounding myself. Probably didn’t help.
How-to get your codec on the PCB:
1. Find an electronics wizard as awesome as James
2. The wizard will usually have a soldering paste in his fridge
3. The wizard will bring some of this paste out, and place it on the PCB with the precision of a surgeon
4. Bake the mounted PCB in a solder-reflow oven
5. Do a visual inspection to check contacts
6. Check for shorts using a multimeter
7. Solder on header pins (that’s what I got to do!)
8. Breadboarding next!
Our first PCB
Putting the codec on the cape, one pin at a time
Now that I have had my fun with hiding away the datasheets, the goal for tonight is to actually push through and complete the codec part of cape. 32 pins and a ground pad: lets see how this goes!
I2C: connecting SCL and SDA to BBBlack’s P2.19 and P2.20, respectively
Mics: (making room for our binaural mics!)
On looking to separate the analog and digital ground planes:
If this the community I belong too, I’m okay with that 🙂
I2C for the codec
I2C tutorial: [ Michael Lenard ]
Interesting graphics: [ fritzing ]
[ bonescript | example | example | oLEDÂ example ]
BBBlack and OSX
[ Bootstrapping BBBlack ]:Â There are four methods to connect to the board: USB Serial, FTDI Serial, TCP over USB and Ethernet.
For some reason, installing the drivers didn’t seem to get the connection up and running. I kept re-installing the drivers, restarted my computer, nothing. I went into network settings and removed the “not configured” BeagleBone Black connections (I had ended up with two of these!) — still nothing. I powered off the BeagleBone and brought it up again, re-installed the Network driver, and boom. Its coming up now. So we can test I2C while running Eagle in an adjacent window. So much for convenience 🙂
BBBlack: Hello World LED flash
This is probably the fifth LED flash of this semester. mBed, R-Pi, Arduino Uno, ezDSP C5515, and now BBBlack. I also borrowed an Edison and we can get to some LEDs coming out of that next? No…enough platforms for now. FPGAs should be coming next anyway!
Fun fact: the curious http://192.168.7.2 address only responds *after* BBBlack’s drivers have been installed. Ha. I liked assigning R-Pi’s IP myself, lets try it on this as well.
I’m really happy about using USB and not the ethernet cord at this moment.
JavaScript now. Wow. Python, C, and now JS. Perhaps I should also start going through Khan Academy’s lessons…
Anyway, Cloud9 looks very interesting! mBed’s cloud based IDE shows up in a new form…
And the LED is flashing alright. I’m just a bit terrified about going from this LED flashing to programming a C5515 through this same board. Well.