One other thing if you get really jammed up on the clock thing (I feel your pain) you might Want to at least consider making a pcb. I've done it a couple times before, it's not pleasant but it's not very hard.
http://www.fullnet.com/u/tomg/gooteepc.htm
Making Magnificent Moonlights
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PetPirate
- Gone Today, Here Tomorrow
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- Location: Shanghai, China
- Contact:
Thanks. Making them at home would be pretty interesting.... but I couldn't be bothered - and wouldn't find the space to put all the equipment safely.
I have had PCBs professionally made here before.... it's actually very cheap (10 - 20 dollars to set up, then about 1 dollar per board), but hassle when you tell them you only want 1 - 2 (and try arguing your case in a very foreign language).... and probably too expensive in the West for most people reading thru these threads.
But you are right.... Once I've had all the bits for my controller up and runnng and proven, I will get PCBs fabbed. One day when I've got time...
I have had PCBs professionally made here before.... it's actually very cheap (10 - 20 dollars to set up, then about 1 dollar per board), but hassle when you tell them you only want 1 - 2 (and try arguing your case in a very foreign language).... and probably too expensive in the West for most people reading thru these threads.
But you are right.... Once I've had all the bits for my controller up and runnng and proven, I will get PCBs fabbed. One day when I've got time...
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PetPirate
- Gone Today, Here Tomorrow
- Posts: 1230
- Joined: Mon Jun 27, 2005 5:41 am
- My Puffers: 3x Tetraodon Nigroviridis in full marine
- Location: Shanghai, China
- Contact:
Well..... here we go!!! At last here comes the *FINAL* anti-climax that is the build instructions.
It's been a loooooong day at work. I'm falling asleep here. Really. I keep having to pick my head up off the keyboard. So, I'm going to try to do as I promised, and actually rush through this one!Any questions, feel free to ask me!
Lets run down the stuff we need... Here's that picture again:
And here's where we're going to put the stuff:
Back view, showing track breaks:
I've missed one, can you spot it? Make sure you get them all!
If you've got this far, most things are fairly straight forward, but I'll go into a bit of detail on the "odd bits"
*Don't forget to clean off the board again before soldering!!!*
R3 & R4
Not much space here. Not enough for the resistors to lie flat. Instead, we can just stand them on-end
RTC
According to the DS1302 datasheet (whioch I heartily recommend as bed-time reading), the distance beteen the crystal and the chip has to be as short as possible. So, they share the same holes. The crystal is so tiny, it should be no problem to squeeze the legs through. Which is more than I can say for my old jeans form last year
Just make sure the metal body of the crystal doesn't touch anything else!
Note also that there's a wire which goes a little way under the socket. It's easiest if you lay the wire before soldering on the socket. Trust me.
Battery
The exact location of the pins on your battery may be slightly different... *make sure* you connect it correctly, whatever you do. Look after the battery carefully. This is not just because I have a battery fetish, but because lithium batteries are... well... full of lithium.
I tried to make that sound a bit funny. But it's not. Seriously. If a lithium battery is shorted out (e.g. by something metal in your pocket, or by connecting it up wrongly, or by clumsily laying the circuit board on a screwdriver... etc etc, the battery can heat up in very short order. When it heats up, the pressure builds inside, and they can burst open. And anyone who knows what lithium is, knows that that is bad -- lithium tends to spontaneously catch on fire in air. They should have a safety auto-disconnect inside, but don't rely on it. Treat it like a little metal box full of fire that wants to burst out. Cos that's what it is.
Phew.
LCD
You have several options here. If you like, you can ignore all my hard-wiring for the LCD, and just run wires off the board directly to the LCD. This is the option to choose if you like rats nests!
This is what I recommend... kindof:
1. Break all the copper on the underside of the board below where the LCD will go.
2. Run the connecting wires down past where the LCD will go, and wrap them around the board:
3. push a pinned socket through the *underside* of the board and carefully solder each loose piece of wire to its legs. Then snip off the excess wire:
I then realised that my LCD was a Chinese character LCD, which, while compatible with ones you're likely to get overseas, is oriented in a completely opposite direction to standard English LCDs. On English language LCDs, the connection pins are normally on the top. On Chinese displays they're on the bottom! This means that the an English LCD would overhang the edge of the board and take up lots of space. Not good for you guys! Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
.
After cursing a lot, I simply solved the problem by soldering in an identical socket on the top, soldering the top one to the pins poking through from the underside.
I then held the whole thing down with hot melt glue:
Classy stuff, I'm sure you'll agree!
All though this was completely unintentional, it worked very well and the result is quite strong. That's why I've included the header in this position on the stripboard layout.
However, you are free to come up with any LCD attachment method you like. Again, just running a cable off-board is the simple way to do it, but looks messy. Whatever you do make sure nothing metal touches any of the components on the board below!!!
See, I went through all that just for you guys! I could've just used my upside-down Chinese character LCD!!!
switches
You can connect one side of all the switches together (the purple wire in this pic) to 0V, where shown on the layout.
and... DONE!
(told you I would rush through things!)
Here's a preview of the whole thing working:
Tadaaaaaa!!!!
I know, I know... the date is wrong. I'm working on that!
And, just in case you didn't know.....
Of course they do!
Just gotta program them now!
It's been a loooooong day at work. I'm falling asleep here. Really. I keep having to pick my head up off the keyboard. So, I'm going to try to do as I promised, and actually rush through this one!Any questions, feel free to ask me!
Lets run down the stuff we need... Here's that picture again:
And here's where we're going to put the stuff:
Back view, showing track breaks:
I've missed one, can you spot it? Make sure you get them all!
If you've got this far, most things are fairly straight forward, but I'll go into a bit of detail on the "odd bits"
*Don't forget to clean off the board again before soldering!!!*
R3 & R4
Not much space here. Not enough for the resistors to lie flat. Instead, we can just stand them on-end
RTC
According to the DS1302 datasheet (whioch I heartily recommend as bed-time reading), the distance beteen the crystal and the chip has to be as short as possible. So, they share the same holes. The crystal is so tiny, it should be no problem to squeeze the legs through. Which is more than I can say for my old jeans form last year
Just make sure the metal body of the crystal doesn't touch anything else!Note also that there's a wire which goes a little way under the socket. It's easiest if you lay the wire before soldering on the socket. Trust me.
Battery
The exact location of the pins on your battery may be slightly different... *make sure* you connect it correctly, whatever you do. Look after the battery carefully. This is not just because I have a battery fetish, but because lithium batteries are... well... full of lithium.
I tried to make that sound a bit funny. But it's not. Seriously. If a lithium battery is shorted out (e.g. by something metal in your pocket, or by connecting it up wrongly, or by clumsily laying the circuit board on a screwdriver... etc etc, the battery can heat up in very short order. When it heats up, the pressure builds inside, and they can burst open. And anyone who knows what lithium is, knows that that is bad -- lithium tends to spontaneously catch on fire in air. They should have a safety auto-disconnect inside, but don't rely on it. Treat it like a little metal box full of fire that wants to burst out. Cos that's what it is.
Phew.
LCD
You have several options here. If you like, you can ignore all my hard-wiring for the LCD, and just run wires off the board directly to the LCD. This is the option to choose if you like rats nests!
This is what I recommend... kindof:
1. Break all the copper on the underside of the board below where the LCD will go.
2. Run the connecting wires down past where the LCD will go, and wrap them around the board:
3. push a pinned socket through the *underside* of the board and carefully solder each loose piece of wire to its legs. Then snip off the excess wire:
I then realised that my LCD was a Chinese character LCD, which, while compatible with ones you're likely to get overseas, is oriented in a completely opposite direction to standard English LCDs. On English language LCDs, the connection pins are normally on the top. On Chinese displays they're on the bottom! This means that the an English LCD would overhang the edge of the board and take up lots of space. Not good for you guys! Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
.After cursing a lot, I simply solved the problem by soldering in an identical socket on the top, soldering the top one to the pins poking through from the underside.
I then held the whole thing down with hot melt glue:
Classy stuff, I'm sure you'll agree!
All though this was completely unintentional, it worked very well and the result is quite strong. That's why I've included the header in this position on the stripboard layout.
However, you are free to come up with any LCD attachment method you like. Again, just running a cable off-board is the simple way to do it, but looks messy. Whatever you do make sure nothing metal touches any of the components on the board below!!!
See, I went through all that just for you guys! I could've just used my upside-down Chinese character LCD!!!
switches
You can connect one side of all the switches together (the purple wire in this pic) to 0V, where shown on the layout.
and... DONE!
(told you I would rush through things!)
Here's a preview of the whole thing working:
Tadaaaaaa!!!!
I know, I know... the date is wrong. I'm working on that!
And, just in case you didn't know.....
Of course they do!
Just gotta program them now!
-
midgetwaiter
- Puffer Fry
- Posts: 38
- Joined: Sat Jun 25, 2005 9:42 pm
- Location: Calgary, Alberta
Cool stuff Jhong. Part of it reminded me of something that happened about 10 years ago.
Everybody pay attention to this part, the chance of one of these blowing is small but it's bad news. Check twice, put it down for five minutes and then check again before you put power to it
They can explode too, the guy on the bench behind me had one go off on him once. Luckily he had a keyboard sitting across the top of it a couple inches up from the board. It cracked the case on the keyboard and shot 4 of the keys off of it and through the acoustic tiles on the ceiling. Sounded like a bomb too, I nearly wet myself. It was worth it to find out that the biker guy I shared my bench with shrieks like a little girl when startled.I tried to make that sound a bit funny. But it's not. Seriously. If a lithium battery is shorted out (e.g. by something metal in your pocket, or by connecting it up wrongly, or by clumsily laying the circuit board on a screwdriver... etc etc, the battery can heat up in very short order. When it heats up, the pressure builds inside, and they can burst open.
Everybody pay attention to this part, the chance of one of these blowing is small but it's bad news. Check twice, put it down for five minutes and then check again before you put power to it
-
DarkEntity
- Figure 8 Puffer
- Posts: 121
- Joined: Tue Nov 28, 2006 4:08 pm
- My Puffers: 1 x Carinotetraodon Salivator
2 x Tetraodon Biocellatus - Location (country): Scotland
- Location: Glasgow(ish) Scotland
Re: Making Magnificent Moonlights
this is very easy to do, infact and theres much easier ways to do it, its as simple as flicking on a switch