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Comparing PCB manufacturers

Foreword

For the majority of our projects we have been using pretty much the same PCB manufacturer called Itead Studio. They have always been the front runners offering good quality at exceptionally low prices. For all our projects the quality has always been ‘good enough’ until the moment when we began making Olinuxino and noticed […]

A Handsoldered PCB Running Embedded Linux

A foreword

Homemade Linux boards have always been just a pipedream for many due to prohibitive complexity of both hardware and firmware. The situation hasn’t even changed with the arrival of Raspberry Pi and Beaglebone boards which still can’t be replicated in home labs either due to the absence of design files, proprietary components in […]

The BlueButton – Assembling & Testing First Prototype

The PCBs eventually arrived, however, this time it was somewhat disappointing: instead of usual two weeks the manufacturing process along with the shipment took almost four weeks. The quality seems to be fine and no ‘gotchas’ have been found so far so hopefully soldering will go smoothly.

This is how the PCBs look like:

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Pilot Display PCBs arrived

Pilot Display Rev.1.0 PCBs finally arrived. At a first glance nothing is terribly wrong, everything seems to be fine which is a good start. However, there is always something in rev1.0 boards or schematics so will see what the subsequent assembling process and preliminary test bring us. As always, Itead Studio PCB manufacturing service has […]

Pilot Display for… a Twin Turbine Engine!

Just recently by a pure accident we became involved into very unusual project. Willing to become known to some degree amongst the local Sydney electronics enthusiasts we decided to take part in one of the community projects and help to build something. It didn’t take much time to wait for someone who posted a request […]

Luminardo PCBs arrived

Luminardo Rev.1.0 PCBs finally arrived so we will be busy this Christmas soldering and debugging. Nothing terribly wrong at this point in time, everything seems to be free from design flows and fabrication faults. The only issue that has been noticed so far is that the manufacturing house for some reasons yet unknown failed to […]

MVFD Serial Backpack

With MVFD Panel requiring substantial amount of pins it becomes really first priority to minimise the number of GPIO and processor’s resources for some projects. That is where MVFD Serial Backpack comes to play. It takes responsibility of communication with VFD panel and conveniently provides either I2C or Serial interface to the main controller. Very […]

Speccy2010 – Assembling, Testing, Having Fun

There are not so many people on Earth who haven’t heard anything about sir Clive Sinclair and his legendary ZX-Spectrum. His compact and affordable personal computer was just perfect not only for gaming but for educational activities, it found its place as a favorite gadget for millions boys and girls. This computer has shaped the […]

GPS/GSM Module. PCB Component Layout

Components are soldered on both sides of the PCB. Only components that need to provide the required functionality should be soldered. Depending on your situation, some components such as CONN1, CONN2, CONN4, CONN5, L1 etc can be soldered on either side of the board. There is no strict sequence for soldering but U1 should be […]

PCBs for Display Module have arrived

New PCBs for multipurpose dot matrix display module have been delivered. Each module comprises of two PCBs joined together by a connector and allowing to minimise vertical dimension virtually to a LED matrix height and giving flexibility to change display color simply by replacing the LED panel.

This time a different PCB manufacturer has been […]