My first PCBs arrived yesterday and I’m really pleased with how they turned out! I was feeling a bit concerned about the detail of the apple logo, and and the outline around the shape that was provided by masking, but I don’t think I could be happier with how it looks. It’s really great.
I soldered one together and immediately ran into a problem. I couldn’t get the programmer to talk to the chip. I checked the connections, checked the pinouts, checked continuity. I tried unplugging it and got the same response. The programmer didn’t think there was a chip present – but the programmer reported that it was “already connected” and also reported the wrong chip.
I did a visual inspect of the header, and it looked like it really wasn’t very well soldered onto the board. While I plan on reflow-soldering most of these, this first one I thought could just be hand-soldered. I added some more solder to the SWD pin (the 1-wire programming pin) and like magic, it worked!
For lack of a better-solution, I soldered some stranded wire to the display headers. I mentioned previously that I made these surface-mount because I wanted to keep the aesthetic of the front of the board – there wasn’t room for single-row SMD header pins. My current plan is to use 20 gauge bare copper wire (like jewelers use) to go from the board to the display. I thought about just buying some solid-core wire, but it would require an awful lot of wire stripping on some very short wires.
In the meantime, here is the assembled v0.5:
Next steps:
– Try the bare-wire screen connect- Order the OLED displays- Order new PCBs with the fixed header- Finish the software (I have a lot of display stuff done, but the interactivity would be nice)
If I time this right, I think I could get them all built pretty quick. It’d be nice to not have this come down to the wire.