TheDirty

Use the coupon and it's $4 right now. http://forum.43oh.com/topic/4371-ti-estore-25-coupon-until-30-sept-2013/ Inductive sensors aren't anything new, but I've never seen them implemented as anything but basic proximity sensors before.

Thanks for sharing. The video was great.

There has to be something wrong with your ferric chloride or possibly exposure. Warm FC should etch a board in a few minutes. I've used all the standard home etchants, and FC has given me the best etch. Quite frankly solder mask is a big waste of time for me. I just don't have much use for it. People mention how nice it is to separate the solder, but I find soldering just fine without it. No comment on the PCB layout. Looks nice to me. I have the (possibly bad) habit of trying to mash in everything as close together as possible and making the smallest board I can.

My solder paste process. Cheap solder paste from DX. http://dx.com/p/lodestar-soldering-paste-50g-4711 Syringe from DX. (just search syringes there) 18 gauge syringe tip from e-bay. You can search them. (maybe smaller gauge if you are doing smaller than 0603) I mix the solder paste with some no clean flux to the correct consistency and scoop it into the syringe. That's it. I apply and use the hot air gun to set everything. Syringes and tips are one use only unless you can find a way to clean them. I use a hot glue gun to seal the tip of the syringe after every use

I've helped a lot of people with this and all I can say once you get a method down you are golden, but even with the exact steps it takes experimentation and time to get it so it's quick and easy. You may have to modify the steps to get things to work for you. I started many years ago and got my process down. For some people now it may not be worth it to go through the learning curve, but if I want to experiment with a board or just need a little add on, I can get a board from Eagle to etched and drilled in a couple hours when waiting for Seeed can take a month or more for 10 boards were I

I do home etching fairly often. The chinese cheapo prototype places are pretty sweet, but fairly often I just need a single board for something specific. Usually just testing with a specific chip. I do toner transfer and I've been doing it for years, so I've got the process pretty set down. I tried out the acid/peroxide solution a few times, but it's just too harsh. It will cut through my resist and I get a lot of pitting. If you get bridges, just suck them up with some solder wick.

You guys suck. It's $8 in Canada for shipping. I'm sure someone from Europe is going to tell us the astronomical shipping price they have to pay.

That doesn't look bad, but overkill in terms of how much work went into making it look pretty. I'll just make a pcb that I can solder the pins to. Likely both sides of the board in an offset pattern; Probably not explaining well. It definitely needs a couple alignment pins/holes to keep the pins on target..

Wow. I was surprised by how tiny these things are. I'd like to make up my own standard 6 pin programming test pad setup. With 6 connections I can cover my most common programming headers, MSP430, Cortex SWD, and PIC.

Thanks for this and the link! I've been looking for good pogo pins for a long time.

Too bad you can't get the old ball mice. Each had two rotary encoders to track the ball movement,

The TLC5940 is not meant to multiplex lights. MAX7219 (older version of the MAX6950) is the cheapest solution in terms of LED driver chips, but it's 5V power and need 3.5V to drive the IO, so you would need a level shifter or a different microcontroller to use them. I say cheapest because you can get these real cheap from e-bay. Even then, you would need 3 for each panel, so 24 of them. 8*8 without RGB is a big project. With RGB it gets a little crazy.

Not much that can go wrong here. I did not check the pin assignements. You have two pins on the 6 pin header unconnected. I'm not certain about these headers. Are these headers going out to breakout boards that are already made for these chips? The only thing I see is that this board is a little too simple to even need to be made. The only thing you have on it other than headers is two pullups. If you are making this just as a test, that's fine, but it seems to me you can freehand wire this easier than making up a PCB in this case. EDIT: You've made your breakout board the si

Any reason you decided to use the W5200 rather than the on board ethernet controller on the LPC1769? Things have come a way since I made up a web board using a ARM7 and a W5300 in 2009. I'm glad I'm not using ARM7 anymore.

I got black boards from Seed or iTead, I don't remember which and they came out fine.