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elf14 presents - Circuit Assembly Tools Giveaway

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The Circuit Assembly Tools Giveaway!

Engineer and Maker Wishlist | Circuit Assembly Tools Giveaway! | Test and Measurement Giveaway! | Ultimate Raspberry Pi Giveaway! | Project14 Holiday Special

 

 

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Welcome to the elf14 element14 Community!

 

It's the season of gift-giving, so the element14 Community has prepared the Best Circuit Assembly Tools Bundle to giveaway!

 

The below kit will be awarded to the element14 members that add a comment and let us know:

 

What was your best electronics fix or repair?

What 'thing' did you figure out in a project or design, or repair that saved the day?

Tell us your good stories, or if you really don't have any, your best recovered disasters!

 

Contest Opens: 27th November 2020

Contest Closes: 30th December 2020

Winners Announced: After 11th January 2021

 

Register to Enter Now!

 

What We Gave Away!

 

Product NameManufacturerQuantityBuy KitBuy Kit
Wire Kit, Jumper, Male to Male, Solderless, 100 mm - 250 mm, 75 PieceMCM1Buy NowBuy Now
Wire Kit, Jumper, Copper, 0.6 mm Diameter, 350 PieceMCM1Buy NowBuy Now
Anti Static Wrist Strap, Adjustable, 6ft Cord, Blue, Alligator ClipMulticomp1Buy NowBuy Now
Single Channel Soldering Rework Station, 230V, 150WMulticomp Pro1Buy NowBuy Now
Solder Paste Squeege, Synthetic No Clean, PVCChip Quik1Buy NowBuy Now
Solder Paste, Synthetic No Clean, 183 °C, 63, 37 Sn, Pb, 15GChip Quik1Buy NowBuy Now
Solder Flux, Rosin, Soldering, Pen Applicator, 10 ml, 9.3 gMulticomp1Buy NowBuy Now

 

Product NameManufacturerQuantity
element14 presents Prototyping BreadBoardn/a1

 

Congratulations to the Winner!

 

has been chosen, and they have 7 days to respond to the message sent to them!

 

If you do not respond within 7 days, I will have to choose another winner!

 

Terms and Conditions apply.

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  • I am still pretty new in terms of experience in Electronics Engineering. So my fix may be quite simple but it is something I am proud of and really "saved the day". At the beginning of this year, I interned at a software startup who recently tried going into embedded systems.

     

    When I joined, they were prototyping with the new STM32WB-series microcontrollers. I guess due to lack of expertise, the hardware team rushed through the circuit design. The PCBA had already been fabricated and I was given a board to debug and try out.

     

    I was told that there was an issue with the accelerometers on board. We were debugging the I2C communication for days.

     

    After doing measurements, I eventually found out that the 1.8V power supply to the accelerometer was only giving 1.25V. I found out that the power supply was wrongly designed and no one was aware of it yet.

     

    The designer mistakenly chose the MAX1920 (adjustable voltage) rather than the MAX1921 (fixed voltage version at 1.8V).

    image

     

    You see, the MAX1920 and MAX1921 were together in the same datasheet and this was the example circuit on the first page.

    image

     

    Hence for the PCBA, we had a small run of about 30 boards with the issue (MAX1920 was populated instead of the required MAX1921). I needed to find the easiest way to solve this problem.

     

    I compared it to the MAX1920 circuit and realized that the difference was only a single resistor to ground.

    image

     

    I did the calculations with the datasheet formula.

    image

     

    And I modified the schematic like this.

    image

     

    The issue was "how to solder it together?". The designer didn't expect to have any issues for this simple power supply circuit so this block was designed to use the smallest package-size.image

     

    I thought it carefully and settled on an 0805-size resistor. My final modification looks like this.

    image

     

    About 2 hours of soldering and less than $1 of resistors, I managed to save the day.

    Much cheaper and easier than ordering replacement ICs!

  • in reply to zst123

    I think it is just great when a problem can be analysed like this, a solution propsed and then implemented at very little cost. You just have to keep telling yourself there is a solution to the problem and quite often it doesn't have to cost a lot of money. Of course, throwing money at a problem also produces good solutions.

     

    Dubbie

Comment
  • in reply to zst123

    I think it is just great when a problem can be analysed like this, a solution propsed and then implemented at very little cost. You just have to keep telling yourself there is a solution to the problem and quite often it doesn't have to cost a lot of money. Of course, throwing money at a problem also produces good solutions.

     

    Dubbie

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