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  • Author Author: spannerspencer
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Year of the Monkey Badge: Red Dog Day

spannerspencer

Year of the MonkeyCelebrate Chinese New Year with element14!

 

Day Four: Red Dog Day

 

Nimen hao! Yesterday it was lions, and today it's dogs! We're well into our run up toward the Chinese New Year now, and this is a part of the festivities that I, for one, wish we had built into Christmas over here in the west. But more on that in a moment.

 

As you know, it's the Year of the Monkey, so in order to win our time-limited badge, all you need to do is stop by to read and comment on each of our New Year blogs. The badge will only be available to earn until February 23, after which you'll have to wait 12 years before it comes up again (given the cycle of the Chinese zodiac).

 

The Dog Days

The red dog is also known as the God of the Blazing Wrath in Chinese culture, which makes for an ominous day. So to help minimise the chance of being on the receiving end of all that bad luck, it's traditional for people to stay at home on the third day of the New Year celebrations, and to not receive any visitors.image

 

I know what you're thinking. Sounds like a perfect opportunity to start a brand new project, when you know you've got the day off work and that no one is going to be hanging on the door bell!

 

So give us your thoughts on the perfect project to start on this magical day of social solitude. It can be anything you like -- a smaller one day project, or a good sprint start on something more ambitious. How would your perfect Red Dog Day shape up?

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  • in reply to peterjcs23

    If you're using EAGLE;

    1. Remember that you can press the ALT key to invoke the alternate GRID!

    2. Use the NET placement tool and not the WIRE tool for electrical connections on a schematic diagram.

    3. Set the classes for your nets and set their target PCB trace sizes.

    4. Use the SHOW command to ensure that all nets are properly connected and routed.

    5. Use the ROUTE command to route the electrical connections.

    6. Run the ERC, DRC and display their reports.

    7. Don't be afraid of making and using your own library of components. For expedition, copy in existing components and tuning them to suit.

     

    Just a few thoughts (as DAB would say)!

     

    Compact

  • in reply to COMPACT

    my problem is not with PCB layout, that is the solution. My problem is with making a prototype with components like this:

    image

    on a 0.1inch grid like this:

    image

    with tools like this:

    image

  • in reply to peterjcs23

    When the solder tip is bigger than the diode you are trying to mount, you have to hold the device in place with dental tools and using eyes that gave up detecting differences between .10 and .11 errors long ago...  is that what you mean?

     

    Jack

  • in reply to jack.chaney56

    When the solder tip is bigger than the diode you are trying to mount, you have to hold the device in place with dental tools and using eyes that gave up detecting differences between .10 and .11 errors long ago...  is that what you mean?

     

    okay up to a point...You have to get by with the massive soldering iron, tweezers and the fading eyes. However you can't get a SOT23-5 chip onto a 0.1inch grid Uno board, you have to use an adaptor and then it's tricky to solder 0805 parts onto the 0.1 pads and get wires on...I invariable create a mess. So my plan is to make an adaptor board to take all the SM parts so all I have to do is solder 0.1 inch grid pins and wires. It's got to be better.