reece.arnott Wrote:
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> I've just built my very first board (only burned
> myself once with the soldering iron :-) so I
> thought I'd give a bit of feedback:
congrats!
> 1) In the instructions it has the line "8) 4 pin
> power connector - diagonals towards bottom of
> board, not top. silkscreen is wrong... rotate
> 180degs". This should instead say that the
> silkscreen is wrong for the 1.2 version.
fixed.
> 2) Under the soldering round 2 instructions it has
> "If you soldered in a DIP socket, then you simply
> plug U1 into that. Otherwise, solder U1 directly
> to the board." I believe this should be U2 not U1.
> From my reading of the BOM, U2 is the chip, U1 is
> the transistor.
fixed.
> 3) The holes for the 12 pin power connector and
> the 2 pin signal connectors are a little tight and
> I needed to use an amount of force I wasn't
> comfortable with to get them in.
i see... i'll fix this for v1.3
> 4) Once the 2 pin signal connectors are in place
> the TX and RX on the silkscreen are all but
> covered. There seems to be room for the writing to
> be above the connectors (between the connectors
> and the chip.
will be fixed in v1.3.
> 5) The holes for the C6 capacitor are slightly too
> close together so the legs have to be bent to fit
> into the holes and so it isn't seated flush with
> the board (or in my case even level).
i'll measure the 'orthodox' capacitor from mouser and make those the proper lengths for v1.3
> 6) The spacing of the holes for C5 is different
> than for C2, C3, and C4 (due to the straddling of
> a circuit). This made me pause for a minute or
> two. A simple sentence in the instructions
> explaining this would be good.
added the text =)
> I'd also like to put in my vote for pre-made
> cables. The only bugbear I have is that that would
> increase the price. Prices of ethernet cables at
> Dick Smiths aren't cheap (I chose them as they
> tend to be common all over Oceania but for a lot
> of things they're a real rip-off actually) but
> there are a lot of cheap ethernet cables vendors
> out there (if all else fails get someone to make
> them up and sell them through the RRRF store) and
> we'd probably only need one or two metre patch
> cables so this hopefully isn't much of a price to
> pay for doing away with all the wiring issues that
> seem to be cropping up at the moment.
i havent heard any objections to ethernet cables for v1.3. i found a supplier that sells 3 foot cables for $0.75 /ea, which means the RRRF should be able to supply them for around $1 each. i'd consider that a GREAT deal.