HardwareArduino

 

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 From:  ANT_THOMAS   
 To:  koswix     
40898.232 In reply to 40898.228 
I've clicked about a bit more and it's made me want to design a PCB.

Are these things cheap to get made?
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 From:  ANT_THOMAS   
 To:  ANT_THOMAS      
40898.233 In reply to 40898.232 
I think the answer is no from a quick search. £80-100 seems to be the figure for the size I might want.
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 From:  CHYRON (DSMITHHFX)  
 To:  Chris (CHRISSS)     
40898.234 In reply to 40898.184 
Don't pull that out at the airport.

----
New giveaways: “Learn Ruby the Hard Way”
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 From:  koswix  
 To:  ANT_THOMAS      
40898.235 In reply to 40898.232 
There's a few options for making the PCB.

You can order them from a PCB fab place, but it really doesn't make financial sense unless you're doing a fairly big run of boards. I read a while ago about a new service someone was setting up getting small batches done via China for pretty cheap (compared to normal prices, anyway). Can't remember what it was called.

Making your own: Simplest way is toner transfer to transfer the layout to a copper board, and then you chemically etch the rest of the copper off. Can be hit and miss (I've heard) with small traces - depends on your print quality/transfer quality.

An interesting alternative is to use a CNC mill to remove the unneeded copper, with precision being governed by the quality of your CNC machine.

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If Feds call you and say something bad on me, it may prove what I said are truth, they are afraid of it.
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 From:  koswix  
 To:  koswix     
40898.236 In reply to 40898.235 
(the other other method is to be at Uni, where they have proper PCB manufacturing kit that can do plated through-holes, multi layers, masks, type etc. )

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If Feds call you and say something bad on me, it may prove what I said are truth, they are afraid of it.
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 From:  ANT_THOMAS   
 To:  koswix     
40898.237 In reply to 40898.236 
I might get you to make me one then....!

Otherwise I saw the toner transfer one, getting the chemicals to do the job should be easy for me. Might give that a go.
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 From:  koswix  
 To:  ANT_THOMAS      
40898.238 In reply to 40898.237 
Sadly I don't get direct access to it, have a friendly lecturer who's happy to get stuff done for me for my silly projects but not sure he'd be happy to extend that to "this guy in met on the Internet."...

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If Feds call you and say something bad on me, it may prove what I said are truth, they are afraid of it.

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 From:  Chris (CHRISSS)  
 To:  ANT_THOMAS      
40898.239 In reply to 40898.237 
How big so you want it? An American site doing 3 copies of a 2 layer board for $5 per square inch + $5 delivery shipping.

Me
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 From:  ANT_THOMAS   
 To:  Chris (CHRISSS)     
40898.240 In reply to 40898.239 
I was thinking 20cm x 15cm. That's probably on the big side.
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 From:  Chris (CHRISSS)  
 To:  ANT_THOMAS      
40898.241 In reply to 40898.240 
That'd work out pretty expensive then. I suppose even a few inches each side wouldnt be cheap. Could you squash it into 1"x1"? ;)

Me
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 From:  Chris (CHRISSS)  
 To:  CHYRON (DSMITHHFX)     
40898.242 In reply to 40898.234 
Could be fun to try it. Might depend if I'm in the mood for a full body search or not.

Me
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 From:  Chris (CHRISSS)  
 To:  ANT_THOMAS      
40898.243 In reply to 40898.240 
I've just been playing with the PWM output with my LED strips. I cut off a small section to test with the Uno.

There's a library called PWM which lets you choose any frequency. I set the frequency to 2000Hz and the flicker at the lowest brightness was almost undetectable. At 20,000Hz (I didn't test anything in between) it had completely gone.

If you have problems with flicker give that a go. I'm now thinking it might be worth setting up an Arduino to control the lights as I don't really like the flicker at low brightness and it would be nice to get rid of it.

Me
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 From:  ANT_THOMAS   
 To:  Chris (CHRISSS)     
40898.244 In reply to 40898.243 
Very useful to know. I did wonder about PWM frequency.

Have you got a link to that library? I'm just using analogWrite at the moment.
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 From:  koswix  
 To:  Chris (CHRISSS)     
40898.245 In reply to 40898.243 
Something I discovered recently (may not be of any use to you but probably handy to know). The Arduino has 6 PWM pins, controlled by 3 timers. Now obviously each *pin* can be set to a seperate duty cycle (0 - 255), but also each *timer* can be set to a separate frequency. So, if you need it for anything, you can have 3 different PWM frequencies, but each pair of pins shares that frequency. There's also some other PWM modes ( http://playground.arduino.cc/Main/TimerPWMCheatsheet ) that may be useful to know.

Makes it possible to control your LEDs with a high frequency, but also if you need to run something else lower, say a motor or something, you can do that to. Don't know if you can use that library to control it (probably, not looked) but you can control it directly from the arduino with the right commands (see link above).

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If Feds call you and say something bad on me, it may prove what I said are truth, they are afraid of it.
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 From:  ANT_THOMAS   
 To:  koswix     
40898.246 In reply to 40898.245 
I read something about the PWM timers being different where one is better to use than another. I'll try and find where I saw that.
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 From:  Chris (CHRISSS)  
 To:  ANT_THOMAS      
40898.247 In reply to 40898.244 
It's this: https://code.google.com/p/arduino-pwm-frequency-library/

Me
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 From:  Chris (CHRISSS)  
 To:  koswix     
40898.248 In reply to 40898.245 
I'd read something about the separate timers on the Arduino but hadn't really taken much notice of it. Not sure yet if it would be handy yet but quite possibly at some point.

I had a quick look at that library and looks like it can change all the timers.

It also allows for up to 16bit resolution instead of just the 256 values. Depends on the frequency though, resolution goes down with increased frequency.

Me
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 From:  koswix  
 To:  Chris (CHRISSS)     
40898.249 In reply to 40898.248 
That 16-bit resolution thing - that could be what Ant was on about. Is it only one that supports 16-bit and the other two are 8-bit? Clutching at straws in my memory here, and I only read it last week :$

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If Feds call you and say something bad on me, it may prove what I said are truth, they are afraid of it.
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 From:  Chris (CHRISSS)  
 To:  koswix     
40898.250 In reply to 40898.249 
Yeah, looks like timer 1 can do 16bit but the other two only 8bit.

Me
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 From:  ANT_THOMAS   
 To:  Chris (CHRISSS)     
40898.251 In reply to 40898.247 
Thanks. I don't really care about having too many degrees of PWM. 0-255 is fine by me. Realistically 0-9 would do the job for the set brightnesses but would look crap for fading.
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