Toy Synthesizer: Never forget thy series resistor!

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Sep 222018
 

So, I’ve gotten back to this project having spent a lot of my time on work, the Yarraman to Wulkuraka bike ride and the charging controller #Solar-powered cloud computing — just to name 3 things vying for my attention.

In the test board, I had wired up some LEDs for debugging, dead-bugged 0805s, which were hooked between the output of the octal latch and 0V.  I omitted the series resistor, as I presumed that, given the output was PWMed with a maximum duty cycle of ⅛, the LEDs shouldn’t burn out.

Turns out I had forgotten a property that all diodes exhibit, that is the desire to clamp the voltage across them.  Today I was testing the board, and wondering why some channels were dim, others didn’t work at all, but one worked so much better.  Did I accidentally put the wrong current limiting resistor in series with the drain?  No, all checked out as about 12 ohms.

I put a program on the MCU that just turned a channel on when the button was pressed.  No music, no fancy PWM stuff, just turn on a LED when the corresponding button was pressed.  Measuring the gate voltage showed about 2V.

Even with the PWM output forced low, the output was still 2V.  Moreover, I was using my new bench supply, and with nothing running, the circuit was drawing ~300mA!  Why?

Turns out, the LEDs I had dead-bugged in, were trying, and succeeding, in clamping the output voltage.  2V was just barely enough to trigger the output MOSFETs, but clearly this was borderline as some worked better than others.  I was likely in the linear region.

Snip out the common connection for the LEDs to 0V, and the problems disappeared.  I’ve dead-bugged a 1kOhm resistor in series with the lot, and that’s got my debug LEDs back and working again.  The MOSFET outputs now work properly.

The bigger chunkier MOSFETs I bought by mistake could have worked just fine: maybe I was just driving them wrong!

Two prospects have crossed my mind:

  • Getting the MOSFET board made professionally
  • Getting a board that combines all components onto one PCB made professionally

The version that is shown was really designed for the home PCB maker to be able to produce.  The traces are wide and the board is fundamentally single-sided: when etching, you just etch one side of the board and leave the other side unetched.  When drilling the holes, you just countersink the holes a bit on all pins not connected to 0V.

A smaller board with everything in one would be worth making now that I’ve proven the concept.  Not sure there’s a good reason to go to SMT at this stage: I still want to make assembly simple.  The thinking is the all-in-one would have some headers so you can conceivably break things out for other projects and just omit parts as required.

This could theoretically be entered into the #The 2018 Hackaday Prize as part of the musical instrument contest, as that’s what it is: it’s a musical instrument for the severely physically handicapped.  There is a video of a slightly earlier prototype in this post .

Code wise, I’ve done little.  The basic functionality is there, it makes noises, it flashes LEDs, that’s about what it needs to do for now.  I did have to increase the start-up delay so that the buttons were detected properly, as without this, if I used my bench-top supply, it would fail to see any inputs.  People aren’t going to notice 100ms boot-up delay vs 1ms, but it makes a difference if the power supply is a little slow.

Toy Synthesizer: I/O module, MkII

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Dec 252017
 

So some spare time today… I decide to construct a new I/O module to fix up the mistakes made with the previous iteration.  Mainly:

  • the TVS diodes… going for one with a higher clamp voltage so it doesn’t smoke when 12V is applied
  • switching to a 4-pin connector on the output side, with pins for 0V, GPIO, DRAIN and +12V
  • fixing the pin-out on the input side so it matches the PCB.
  • rather than having jumper leads to make the boards separable, we’ll make one monolithic board that plugs into all 8 channels simultaneously with one long connector.

For the TVS diodes, I ordered some TPD2E007 in SOT23… thinking those would be a reasonable size for hand-soldering.

00

Now… how the bloody hell am I going to solder these little tiddlers?  I had thought SOT-23 was about twice that size.  Never mind, can’t un-buy them.

The circuit is pretty much identical to what came before.  My MOSFETs and 4.7nF capacitors seem to have gone walkies, not sure where.  No doubt the arrival of replacements will summon them back.  I decided to use SMT for many parts on this build.

0805 resistors and veroboard aren’t a bad combo really, just have a sharp blade handy to cut the track where needed, and the resistor can straddle the gap made.

For the TVS diodes, the common pin is to ground, so I made a bus bar running vertically down the PCB and scoring the tracks either side.  The common pins could be soldered to that, and the two I/O pins would straddle the division between each track.  Aside from me getting some parts off-by-one at first, this went well.

The zener and schottky diodes of course, being through-hole, went on the other side of the PCB.

I still have to locate where my MOSFETs have gone, and I think I found some 12 ohm resistors (through-hole).  I can use some 0805 1k resistors for the MOSFET gates.  So that’s some MOSFETs and 4.7nF, probably 0805 size capacitors that need ordering in the new year.

Toy Synthesizer: First board built

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Jun 102017
 

So, I haven’t yet tried out the MOSFET outputs, but nearly all the GPIO inputs work. I say nearly… there is one that doesn’t on channel 4.

I can test by shorting out the 0V and GPIO pins with a multimeter probe. Not sure why one channel isn’t working yet, that I’ll have to debug tomorrow.

It is worth noting that the MC14066s here are older than I am if I am reading the date codes correctly. Still, they’ve been kept in a tube all these years, so no reason why they’d suddenly pop. More probable, I’ve goofed somewhere in the wiring of this.

At worst, I should be able to de-solder the faulty chip (if that is the case) and put another one in its place… I have plenty lying around. The fact that its mate on the other side is working fine, is promising.

The up side is this board doesn’t look like a big mess of wires like the last prototype. Once I get the faulty channel sorted, I should be able to make the I/O modules that will provide the MOSFET outputs, ESD protection and switch debouncing.

One thing I’ll probably do in future: use bigger vias for my jumper wires, and actually mark on the silk screen component values and the jumper wire routes.

Did some probing… turns out my jumper wire wasn’t making good contact with the via … a dry joint. Definitely I’ll make the vias bigger next time!

Toy Synthesizer: Boards have arrived

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Jun 092017
 

So, I had a surprise delivery this morning… 10 PCBs for the new synthesizer.

These are just two-layer affairs… with the idea being that anyone can manufacture these themselves. The top layer if made at home is done just by covering one side of a double-sided PCB with tape. The other can be done by hand with a dalo pen, using photographic methods or using toner transfer.

One thing I did have originally, and lost when I told Kicad to delete all footprints when re-working the design, is the mounting holes in the corners, something I’ll have to re-add.

I’ll have to pick up some 74HC574s (or perhaps ‘573s, since that’s what the hobby shops sell… won’t matter for this project, either will do) and get soldering this weekend.

Solar Cluster: Boards Arrived

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Oct 122016
 

So, after a couple of email enquiries, the truth is unveiled. As it turns out, Swiss Post send parcels via one or more transit countries which due to a quirk in their tracking UI, may appear as the destination.

Asendia were in touch last night informing me that: “Please kindly note that sometimes tracking website will show the wrong destination. Canada is only the transit country.” Ahh okay, no problem then. Confusing, but that’s fine. 🙂

I know now for later not to panic if it says Canada.

This morning, there was a surprise parcel arrived at work, containing 6 PCBs. Bonus! Guess I had better get the other parts on order. I won’t have them ready for this week end, but I predict much solder smoke in my future next weekend.

Solar Cluster: Getting PCBs made

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Sep 302016
 

So a few weeks ago, I gave the charge controller a test, seeing if it in fact reacted in the manner I expected before deciding whether to proceed with the existing prototype or whether I should iterate the design.

In the end, I decided I’d tweak the design and get new boards built. By using SMD parts and a 4-layer board, I was able to shrink my design down to a 5×5cm square, which is relatively inexpensive to have fabricated.

I’ll be getting a few boards which means I can have some spares in case something goes bang or if I want to scale out my battery bank.

The updated design is published in the files section. This also incorporates @K.C. Lee‘s advice regarding back-to-back MOSFETs.

After some fun and games, one PCB fab house telling me to “check my passwords match” (when I know for certain that they did match), and another seemingly ignoring the inner two layers, I settled on a PCB manufacturer (thanks to PCBShopper) and got the boards ordered.

I put down my home address for the billing address and my work address as the delivery address. Both given as being in “Queensland, Australia”.

This is a learning experience for me, I’m used to just drawing my circuit out with a dalo pen, but unfortunately my skills aren’t up to producing a board for SOICs.

They reported that they shipped the boards on the 21st, and had previously estimated about 2-3 weeks for delivery. No problem there.

Just one niggling concern…

Not familiar with Swiss Post procedures, I’d have expected it to show Hong Kong → Australia, but maybe that’s how they do things. I do hope someone didn’t get Queensland, Australia mixed up with Quebec, Canada!

Update: Just been in touch, no the manufacturer didn’t get it mixed up, and it’s the right tracking number. They’re chasing it up with Swiss Post.

Solar Cluster: Charge Controller description

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Jun 112016
 

So, I’ve built the controller. The design was pretty simple. Using an ATTiny24A, I’d monitor the voltages of the battery and two power inputs, and code would decide which input to use, if any. It also could use the in-built temperature sensor to control cooling fans. This is the schematic I knocked up this morning.

The values of most resistors are not critical. I found I needed 1kOhm resistors into the bases of the transistors as the MCU was not happy driving them directly. The transistors I’m using are BC547Bs controlling AUIRF4905 MOSFETs.

The only components that are critical are the voltage dividers on the ADC inputs. I’ll be using the built-in 1.1V reference in the MCU as that’s what’s needed for the temperature sensor anyway.

This was a bit of an exercise in reviving old brain cells as it’s been some time since I’ve done a proper PCB myself. This is a one-off prototype with mostly larger components, so no point in getting boards fabricated. I did it the old fashioned way, using a dalo pen then etching in a bath of Ferric Chloride.

That gives you an idea of what the board looked like prior to population. The underside was covered with tape to prevent it from being etched. It took a while, and I think I could have upped the concentration of the solution a bit, since it did leave some tracks un-etched.

Perhaps my solution is getting a little old too… the logo on the bottle really dates it. I found I had to attack the gaps between some tracks with a knife since the etchant didn’t quite get it all.

There are no tracks on the bottom, it’s just one piece of un-etched copper, to act as a ground plane. I guess the construction style is a cross between Manhattan and groundplane (dead-bug) construction. The constructed board looks like this.

I’m not sure what all the LEDs will be doing at this point. Three share pins with the ICSP header, which means they flash as the board is being programmed… useful for troubleshooting ICSP issues. The IC socket is a cheap 14-pin one, I just bent the pins to mount it flush to the board. The 10uF tantalum on the output of the 5V PSU is possibly a 10V one. Where the electrolytic is, is where I had the 330uF tantalum mounted, and it went bang when I gave it 12V.

I tried the following program on the board which just steps through all the LEDs and MOSFETs:

/* board.h */
/* LEDs */
#define LED_U1_BIT		(1 << 7)
#define LED_MOSI_BIT		(1 << 6)
#define LED_MISO_BIT		(1 << 5)
#define LED_SCK_BIT		(1 << 4)
#define LED_U0_BIT		(1 << 3)
#define LED_PORT		PORTA
/* MOSFETs */
#define FET_MAINS		(1 << 0)
#define FET_SOLAR		(1 << 1)
#define FET_FAN			(1 << 2)
#define FET_PORT		PORTB
/* test.c */
#include <avr/interrupt.h>
#include <util/delay.h>
#include <stdint.h>
#include "board.h"
uint8_t heartbeat = 10;
int main(void) {
	DDRA = LED_U1_BIT | LED_MOSI_BIT | LED_MISO_BIT
		| LED_SCK_BIT | LED_U0_BIT;
	DDRB = FET_MAINS | FET_SOLAR | FET_FAN;
	PORTA = 0;
	PORTB = 0;
	/* Test sequence */
	while (1) {
		PORTA = LED_U0_BIT;	_delay_ms(1000);
		PORTA = LED_U1_BIT;	_delay_ms(1000);
		PORTA = LED_MOSI_BIT;	_delay_ms(1000);
		PORTA = LED_MISO_BIT;	_delay_ms(1000);
		PORTA = LED_SCK_BIT;	_delay_ms(1000);
		PORTA = 0;
		PORTB = FET_MAINS;	_delay_ms(1000);
		PORTB = FET_SOLAR;	_delay_ms(1000);
		PORTB = FET_FAN;	_delay_ms(1000);
		PORTB = 0;
	}
	return 0;
}

That seems to prove the hardware is alive, and now I just have to get the software working. Now to try out the toolchain I built!