Life in Hew England
I have been sidetracked with some vacation time, sick kids, and five days without power. (I think it’s a requirement now to own a generator if you live in the Northeastern US) So… progress has been limited over the past two weeks. I have verified the new version PC board and it all works fine. The beta kits are about half done, there are a couple of parts that are on backorder from Mouser, IRF510s and a couple of resistor values. Through hole parts still seem to be available although they are not stocked like they used to be. Many common parts and values are now special order with minimum quantity requirements. It doesn’t matter much to me since I buy in large quantities but for the person who wants to buy a few parts for a project, it is getting more difficult.
Arduino Notes
I noticed the other day that Arduino has released a new software package which has better support for custom hardware. I need to download it and learn how that works. On a different note, I have had some trouble uploading sketches to the new revision xcvr board. The workaround is to externally power the board during programming. I have not figured out exactly what the difference is but I suspect that I just got lucky on the previous version board and that the current draw of the xcvr board is more than the USB powered programmer can handle. Officially, I will recommend using external power mode when using the USB Tiny programmer. To do this, the power jumper, which is close to the side where the ribbon cable attaches, must be removed. This disconnects USB Tiny power from the target board. I have had very good luck programming in this mode but it’s slightly inconvenient since I have to connect power to the board before attaching USB Tiny.
Enclosure News
I have decided to include a full enclosure with the beta kits. Originally I was going to include the enclosure bottom only. The enclosure will also be powder coated so it’ll be a nice finished product. The only thing I am on the fence about is whether to add a silkscreen legend since it adds about $10 to the cost. Maybe folks can let me know whether it’s worth that to have silkscreening on the front and back of the enclosure.
Multi-Turn Tuning Pot
I have located a source for a reasonably priced multi-turn potentiometer and this will be included in the kit as well. It’s a big improvement over the standard pot and makes fine tuning much easier.