New tool to find short capacitors on motherboards : shorty with display

[dicky96]

Re: New tool to find short capacitors on motherboards : shorty with display

I'm still interested at that price

[stj]

Re: New tool to find short capacitors on motherboards : shorty with display

sounds good - i may need a few.

[clearchris]

Re: New tool to find short capacitors on motherboards : shorty with display

it seems I will be able to ship a letter with a pcb inside for EUR 5 all around the world without tracking, and 8-9 EUR with tracking. more expensive than china of course but still reasonable.

That's not bad at all. Last I checked it was a lot more.

BTW, will you (or can you) post a STEP file from that render you made? I could get working on designing a 3d-printed enclosure. In regards to an enclosure, some mounting holes would be nice, looks like the board is already going to be drilled for the DIN, though I don't know if that requires a bit change and will increase the BOM. Might be nice to have the USB port on the nano closer to the edge for easier access, but I don't know if you have traces running on that side of the board. Unbolting the case to upgrade also isn't that terrible of an outcome. + and - would also be nice on the silkscreen for the 9v connector.

The other thing I'm thinking of is how best to mount the LCD, it sits back a bit on the board in relation to the other components, but it could be attached with ribbon cable and mounted off the board.

Can't wait for this, it's a tremendous innovation. Interested bare pcb or populated.

Here's two of my designs
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4126979
Note on this one how I thinned out the wall to allow USB access.
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4249306

I don't know if this tool would be best standing up or laying down (like your case) on the bench though. What do you think is an ideal probe cord length, the shorter the better? Is there an advantage to being able to put the device next to the work?

[kripton2035]

Re: New tool to find short capacitors on motherboards : shorty with display

the pcb is not final in size... I'm thinking of adding one pad with a 1Ω resistor to calibrate easily. but it will be defined soon. yes the oled seems difficult to put nicely into a case. I've never seen a 0.91" oled nicely fitting in a case ! that's why I am now not focusing at all on a 3d printed case. I would leave the pcb alone.

[clearchris]

Re: New tool to find short capacitors on motherboards : shorty with display

I've never seen a 0.91" oled nicely fitting in a case

Challenge accepted.

But yeah, it's major for you just to put out the hardware, leave the cases to others.

[stj]

Re: New tool to find short capacitors on motherboards : shorty with display

making a clean hole is always a challenge, but mounting is easy.
just put a block of packaging foam behind it to gently press it against the front.

[kripton2035]

Re: New tool to find short capacitors on motherboards : shorty with display

here is the freecad file of the imported pcb.
please note that this is not the final pcb.
have fun.

[clearchris]

Re: New tool to find short capacitors on motherboards : shorty with display

here is the freecad file of the imported pcb.
please note that this is not the final pcb.
have fun.

Yeah, I understand changes will probably be made, but most of the components will be the same, etc. I can start thinking about it. My best designs take a while to kick around some different ideas...

[megaraider]

Re: New tool to find short capacitors on motherboards : shorty with display

i got 10 last time.
they are used on gotek floppy-simulators. ]

Being not only a retro gaming fan (Spectrum, Atari, Amiga, ...) and Arcade [MAME] but also in hardware,
can't hope wondering where did you use all those gotek floppy emulators
[This made me recall the amazing, @ the time, in midle 90's, i think,
Iomega Zip drives with much greater capacity and performance :]

[stj]

Re: New tool to find short capacitors on motherboards : shorty with display

i put some in amiga's, one in an arcade system, and i have a few loose ones for testing stuff.

[stj]

Re: New tool to find short capacitors on motherboards : shorty with display

@kripton2035:
just to clarify before i order any more,
your pcb is for a NANO?

[kripton2035]

Re: New tool to find short capacitors on motherboards : shorty with display

yes look at the freecad file some posts above
https://www.aliexpress.com/wholesale...t=arduino+nano

[stj]

Re: New tool to find short capacitors on motherboards : shorty with display

or with micro-usb
though for some reason it has a huge 12MHz crystal in the picture!??
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32292945241.html

[clearchris]

Re: New tool to find short capacitors on motherboards : shorty with display

or with micro-usb
though for some reason it has a huge 12MHz crystal in the picture!??
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32292945241.html

Micro USB is and always has been pretty terrible. Granted, the USB port won't be used on this much, but still. The micro-usb nano looks pretty non-standard to me, I'd stick to something more mainstream. I'd get the blue 328 or the 328p. Pretty sure all mine are the 328 version, though IIRC the 328p is a little better in some what that I don't remember.

[stj]

Re: New tool to find short capacitors on motherboards : shorty with display

i always go for the biggest memory.
i may try this project on a bluepill - 80MHz 128k flash
the advantage of having stuff just sitting here is i can try such stuff
waiting for the postman to deliver my Raspberry-Pi PICO btw.
no idea what i want it for, but for under €4 i had to have one!

[kripton2035]

Re: New tool to find short capacitors on motherboards : shorty with display

the total compiled project size is actually around 20k, so a 128k will be more than too much.

[megaraider]

Re: New tool to find short capacitors on motherboards : shorty with display

i put some in amiga's, one in an arcade system, and i have a few loose ones for testing stuff.

Thanks

waiting for the postman to deliver my Raspberry-Pi PICO btw.
no idea what i want it for, but for under €4 i had to have one!

Me neither, but for that price (assuming shipment to Europe included), i must have one too
Would u mind share the link?

[stj]

Re: New tool to find short capacitors on motherboards : shorty with display

RS, free shipping when you spend 30 or more.
so i just added it to a big cap order.

4us$ is the official price, so you should find it for about €4 anywhere that actually has stock.
and that's the tricky thing - every time a new pi gets released they never have enough!!
https://uk.rs-online.com/web/p/raspberry-pi/2122162/
https://www.reichelt.com/gb/en/raspb...o-p295706.html

[megaraider]

Re: New tool to find short capacitors on motherboards : shorty with display

Thanks for the share @stj.

[clearchris]

Re: New tool to find short capacitors on motherboards : shorty with display

i always go for the biggest memory.

I'd think the speed might help, but maybe not, I haven't read the code, but I rarely run out of ram or flash on these small devices.

Raspberry-Pi PICO

https://www.raspberrypi.org/products...pecifications/
>Dual-core Arm Cortex-M0+ processor, flexible clock running up to 133 MHz
Ugh. Now I have to deal with threads on a tiny mcu. I think I'll pass on this one for a while, I'm pretty bought into the stm32 ecosystem. Speaking of which, I think this was recently released, it's a version of the blue pill with stm32f4 processor, usb c, and space for a flash chip on the underside. I might grab a few.
https://docs.zephyrproject.org/lates...doc/index.html