Open Fest 2016 – Soldering of the Open Source Hardware GHOST

“A ghost is haunting Europe—the ghost of communism.” said Carl Marx in 1848

We can re-phrase “A Ghost is haunting OpenFest 2016 – the ghost of open source hardware” 😀

We created this Soldering Kit specially for Open Fest as third year in a row we do soldering workshops there:

It’s a very simple board, specially made for novices with small PIC10F206 microcontroller which has only 512 words of Flash memory and 24 bytes of RAM, still enough to write C code like this.

In the good Olimex traditions being overwhelmed with work we totally forgot for the soldering workshop and started the project 3 weeks before OpenFest 🙂

The board was quickly routed with KiCAD and we sent to PCB manufacturer in China, who keep the promise to make the blank PCBs for 1 week and shipped on time but DHL late with the customs clearance and we got the board Friday morning! The workshop was Saturday and Sunday, right on time!

Then we had half Friday fun with Microchip’s MPLABX tools, which refused to re-program the PIC10F206 once it’s programmed.

After few hours we found that MPLABX version 3.35 can program and erase PIC10F206 just fine but MPLABX 3.45 don’t.

Still there was enough time till 20.00 o’clock and we managed to program 200 kits ready for soldering next day 🙂

The initial intention was to make LED breathe but after losing so much time with MPLABX we decided the first version to be simple 10 times blink!

Here you can see people assembling it on OpenFest:

Girls, Boys, Kids all were not afraid and took the soldering irons:

After OpenFest we continued to investigate why the newer MPLABX refused to program PIC10F206 more than once, the problem was trivial, to erase it the Vcc must be above 4.5V:

Still interesting why MPLABX 3.35 was erasing it even without this voltage settings 🙂

This is why working with embedded systems is such fun. You never know where you can step aside and you have to worry not just for the code but also for the hardware as source of mistakes.

Needless to say we had no any assembly instructions for the kit at OpenFest, but now proudly we put them on the web site of the kit.

 

SoftUni camp Soldering workshop – 17th of August in Hisarrya

This week, right after our vacation we have been invited to make soldering workshop in SoftUni camp – the summer camp of the Software University.

More than 30 enthusiastic youngsters most of who have never worked with hardware assembled their first electronic boards and then learned how to program them with Arduino IDE.

The boards they assembled were: OLIMEXINO-85-KIT, FOSDEM-85 and SIMON-85-KIT

It was amazing that all of the boards were working at the end 🙂

 

New Product in stock: Magnify glasses for soldering quality inspection

MAG-GLASSES is low cost tool to inspect your solder paste printing and BGA soldering quality. With two LED lamps it allows you to take look at BGA soldering:

so you can see if the solder balls are well soldered (collapsed) and to trouble shoot your soldering process like head in pillow BGA soldering effect.

or the solder paste print quality:

 

New products in stock: Low cost soldering irons and tips

CHN-SLD907 is small and compact but powerful 220VAC 60W soldering iron with ESD grounding and variable temperature control with closed loop and temperature sensor. This soldering iron is perfect for both small and regular components soldering and have 5 different type of compatible soldering tips:

CHN-T907-B is the general purpose tip which is installed on the iron by default:

For small SMT component CHN-T907-I :

For bigger PTH components CHN-T907-2.4D:

For large PTH components: CHN-T907-3C:

and for extra large PTH components CHN-T907-K:

All soldering tips are with good quality and nickel-chrome plating which ensures long life.

For people on budged there is CHN-SLD802 soldering iron:

This soldering iron is without ESD grounding and the temperature control is open loop i.e. you have potentiometer to set temperature 200-450C but no temperature sensor and close loop controller.  Otherwise the soldering iron is with ceramic heater and 220VAC 60W power, the handle have extra heat insulation. There are three soldering tips for this iron, the CHN-T802-B is what is installed by default:

This is with same dimensions as AOY-T-B but with lower cost. For small SMT component CHN-T802-I can be used:

and if you have to solder bigger PTH components CHN-T802-1.6D is used:

These soldering tips also have nickel-chrome plating for long life.

 

 

 

 

15 New Products in stock

We have 15 new products in stock! Above on the picture you see KBD-BT1 which is 3-in-1 Wireless Keyboards + Touch panel mouse + Laser pointer. This keyboard works with all our OLinuXino boards both under Android and Linux and have re-chargeble LiPo battery which can be charged on any USB port or adapter with USB mini cable.

KBD-BT2 is bigger version, gamer edition, with bigger LiPo battery, many functiona keys:

again it’s compatible with any OLinuXino both under Android and Linux, but you can use it with any Android dongle or your smart TV to browse internet and work from distance.

USB-BT4 is super duper mother of all Bluetooth dongles. It supports Classic Bluetooth 2.0, High speed Bluetooth 3.0 and latest Bluetooth Low Energy 4.0, so you can use it with nRF8001 and any other Bluetooth device which is 2-3-4 compatible. The dongle comes with mini CD for WIndows installation. Linux distributions with kernel 3.11 or higher should have implementer BLE 4.0 support, for the moment support for OLinuXino is not available as our kernel is 3.4, but we hope to have support soon:

 

We got two new ECG electrodes. ECG-SCUP is suction cup electrode compatible with SHIELD-EKG-EMG when used with SHIELD-EKG-EMG-PRO cable and snaps directly to it:

ECG-CLIP is clip electrode compatible with SHIELD-EKG-EMG when used with SHIELD-EKG-EMG-PRO cable and snaps directly to it:

AOY-T1-6D, AOY-T-I and AOY-T-B are soldering iron tips for AOY-SLD936 and AOY-SLD936A soldering stations:

AOY-B002 is 60W/24V spare handle with ceramic heater and soldering tip for AOY-SLD936A

AOY-B004 is 35W/24V spare handle with ceramic heater and soldering tip for AOY-SLD936

AOY-C001, AOY-C008 and AOY-C010 are spare ceramic heaters for AOY-SLD936, AOY-936A and AOY-SLD463 soldering stations:

 

CHN-TWZ2MM is lower cost but still good quality tweezers alternative to PGC-00SA professional tweezers:

 

CHN-TWZ1MM is ultra low cost amateur quality tweezers which are good for pick and place of SMT components but can’t be used for component lead forming like CHN-TWZ2MM and PGC-00SA.

 

New Products in Stock: Soldering stations, Magnify Lens with Lamp, Smoke absorber

We just got new lot of equipment from AOYUE.

AOY-SLD463 is small and compact, but powerful soldering station with ceramic PTC heater and input power 75W, with closed loop temperature control from 200 to 480C with this soldering iron you can solder both SbPb and ROHS compliant high temperature solders. The trade off is that this soldering iron is just grounded but have no EDS protection, so it may damage static sensitive devices.

AOY-SLD936 is well known low cost soldering station for 20W ceramic heater. The heater works with 24V, closed loop control makes possible precise control from 200 to 400 C and is OK for both SnPb and ROHS high temperature solders. These soldering stations are with ESD protection. AOY-SLD936A is higher power model with 60W PTC ceramic heater which allow quick temperature rise and is suitable for soldering of bigger connectors and parts which require more heating.

AOY-LMP927 is magnify glass x3 and x15 with white LED ring.

AOY-ABS486 is smoke absorber with carbon filter. If you have no ventilation and soldering at home this is must to have item as it absorbs the toxic fumes which are released during soldering activity.