Looks Nice. My only recommendations are switch to surface mount resistors. 0603 size is relatively easy to work with and very cheap and leave space for a buck/boost converter to raise the voltage on your power lines if they drop due to wire lengths. As I mentioned earlier you can use the end of 1 of my propmod-us to do this. I can even send you a few pcb free.
Yep I live in Calgary, AB. I work as an Electrician to pay the bills. The jobs I could get with my Electrical Engineering Technology degree did not pay well and were not very interesting.
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My new unsecure propmod both 1x1 and full size arriving soon.
Looks good. Smaller than I expected which is good too. Looks like the slaves are not going to be anywhere near as big as I thought.
I best get to work on the software for it. Hope you can write the PC portion of it. I am going to be hard pressed to get the prop part done. Mid June to early September are my busiest time.
I don't think I'll have power issues with the ignitors, but I'll leave some extra space for some mods at the end of the board. What is the reason for switching to surface mount resistors?
it is not the ignitors i am thinking you may have problems with voltage levels. It is the logic it does not take much current over 100' of wire to drop the voltage to low.
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My new unsecure propmod both 1x1 and full size arriving soon.
Mind you, this is only 16 relays, I need to try and pack 56 of these things on a 8"x11" board. Hey, riddle me this, out of curiosity and I think I know the answer already but I want to see what you think. I missed drilling a couple of holes in the board until after I had soldered some of the LED's on. When I drilled thru and the spinning chuck was near the LED's, a couple of them lit up... whats up with that. I'm guessing it was the spinning of the chuck at 20,000+rpm near the traces that was inducing some type of current and with these LED's being so sensitive they lit up a little. I also did a little test with one of my 12v batteries trying to show my daughter what happens when the led's are hooked up with that much voltage without the resistor. To my surprise, the test LED lit up a bright teal color, but didn't burn out and I held it for a minute. I was impressed, I figured it would blow out immediatly.
Got it. I haven't quite decided on what I'm doing for power yet. Would it work to put a 5v regulator on the logic side where the power comes in and push 12v to it to compensate for the voltage drop over the longer distances. Again, with the current setup, I should be able to keep all of the slaves easily under 100' and make up for the lenght on the ignition cables. I tested a couple of old prototype ignitors I had from last year with a little 7.2v battery and they lit instantly.
I will look into getting surface mounts. I need to order some solder paste and do some experimenting with the reflow method and if I can get that to work, it may be in my best interest to go with surface mounts for those anyway. I suppose I can put the option of both in there, have the pads there for surface mount with a thru hole in them if I go the other way. I'm really starting to like surface mounts though after I leaned to use them.
you can put 12v to a regulator and get 5v out. will run very hot though unless you use a switching regulator. for your short show should not be a problem though. I would recommend putting a small 0.5 ohm 10W resister in series with the 12v in if using analog. The actual resistance value depends on current though. Larger values meen less work for regulator but 2 large a value and there is not enough voltage out.
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My new unsecure propmod both 1x1 and full size arriving soon.
I was planning on putting heat sinks on them, I showed the prototype to my brother tonight and he suggested the regulator and heat sink solution as an option.
heat sinks are always good. defnetly simpler and cheaper then trying to assemble a buck bust converter. make sure you have a large cap after the regulator. 100uF should do.
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My new unsecure propmod both 1x1 and full size arriving soon.
BTW 4pcb.com is offering $600 off first order. they can make your traces 6mil wide and do double sided. this would let you get your boards smaller easier.
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My new unsecure propmod both 1x1 and full size arriving soon.
Have you ordered from 4pcb.com before for the free boards? It looks like you get $600 free on a flex order. I'm guessing flex it the ribbon type or circuits? The $500 free is 1/2 off up to $250 on your first two orders which doesn't help in either case.
I'm looking for cheap surface mounts right now. The 0603 size resistor seems a bit small to work with after having to put 1000 or so of them on. I'm looking at the 1206 size, seems a little more reasonable to work with. I have big hands so I loath having to work with micro stuff. Do I need to provide the drivers on the master with their own power or does the prop have enough to supply all of them and the status led's?
i have ordered from 4pcb.com before but not in a long time. The money off you use to be able to take off the entire order. I now order my boards from China. $100 for 155 square inches. I have to pay an extra $40 to have them tested and silver coated so they are ROSH compliant but you would not have to do that.
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My new unsecure propmod both 1x1 and full size arriving soon.
chaosgk said...
Do I need to provide the drivers on the master with their own power or does the prop have enough to supply all of them and the status led's?
not sure what you mean. the prop can supply 50mA on each pin.
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My new unsecure propmod both 1x1 and full size arriving soon.
chaosgk, I just caught up with the posts and would suggest going with switching regulators on the slaves along with reasonably large capacitors. There are 3 pin switching regulators available that only require one inductor in addition to the capacitors you would use on any regulator. I will hunt down the part number. A heat sink for the regulator is always a good idea.
Using a switcher also means you only have to run one voltage to the slaves and have much less heat produced.
btw - I hope you never have to turn on all the relays in a slave at one time. The 5V regulator would have to be pretty hefty to handle that. What is the current draw of the relay coil?
The master console will need 5V for the line driver chips and 3.3V for the prop. The current required is reasonably low so it should not be a problem.
If the matches ignite at 12V you may want to consider having a 12V battery in each slave. I know that is quite a few batteries but it saves a lot of wiring, gets around the voltage drop in long cables, reduces the size of capacitors needed in the slaves, and provides some redundancy.
Here are the data sheets. One is a 3A regulator, the other is 1A. The 1A should be enough. Let me know the current draw and/or resistance of the relay coils and I will know for sure.
I kind of want to stay with the main power panel for the ignitor supply, I need to have some type of dead mans switch that disables all output to the ignitors. The idea was to have a master power board with a switch that runs back to me that controls a big relay on the power board. If anything goes wrong, I flip the switch and the relays all go dead. That switch, or another switch should be tied into the pause pin of the prop so if I have to disable the show for an emergency, the show pauses and everything goes safe.
I'll have to look and see what the relays draw for power, but it's pretty small. I can't imagine any reason all relays would have to turn on at once so that shouldnt' be a problem.
Why does the prop need 3.3v? The prop dev board I have has a 6-9v power input on it and a couple of 5v and 3.3v power regulators on it. I was wondering if I can use the 5.5v that is already supplied by the prop board to run the drivers and LED's or if I need a seperate 5v supply for those.
yes you can use the prop development boards regulated power. at 12v input though you will only be able to get a small amount of current out thought. It will not fail with 100mA draw for 30min with heat sinks. but the regulators will bun your skin at that draw.
As for main power. If the battery is by you use a standard wall switch. They are cheap and designed to take heavy currents.
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My new unsecure propmod both 1x1 and full size arriving soon.
Good point on both counts. I forgot you were using the protpboard, not just the prop chip, as well as overlooking the safety switch aspect of the design. What can I say, I only got 1 cup of coffee this morning and the caffeine hadn't reached the brain yet. It has also been a long week. Thank goodness it's also a long weekend.
The Master console is just about done.· I just need to add the LED in for the SRCLR and put the pullup and pull down resistors on.· Do I need those series resistors or not, if so, what are those and where do they go?· Also, do you have a good suggestion for resistor size for the status led's or don't I even need them since they are only coming off the signal lines anyway?· Something small like 100ohm maybe or what?·
I had to use pretty small traces to fit everything coming off the drivers going to the jacks so hopefully they will etch ok.·
mctrivia is right. I shoot for 5-10 mA current though the led. You will need the series resistors on the lines from the prop to the line driver chips. The rest are optional but I do suggest putting pads on the board for them.
I'm assuming a series resistor is just what it says, put it in line with the line coming off the prop board on the way to the drivers. One on each line, any certain resistance? 1.2k, 300, let me know. I'll put the pads in for them.
I purchased there 0603 resister and cap kit when i first started surface mount work. excellent case and they have every single possible value at 1% error. now i buy parts by the real and string off a couple hundred into the compartments when I empty 1.
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My new unsecure propmod both 1x1 and full size arriving soon.
Need to upload large images or movies for use in the forum. you can do so at propmodule.com/upload.html for free.
Just how tiny is the 0603 chip? it looked pretty small on the specs I saw and wanted to get a biggere size. I may pick up a misc pack of SMD's and a reel of 1.2k's for the slaves.
The series resistors were 1K in the master schematic. 1.2K would also be fine. I have attached a copy of the updated schematic. Let me know if you have questions.
Ok, got all series resistors in place on both the spare prop pins and the lines to the drivers. for my pullup resistors for the spare lines, can I have a single resistor that feeds the 3.3v line to the spares or do I need a resistor on each of the pins. I have it so the connection to the pullup is selectable via a jumper pin so I can disable the pullup on it. Also for the 5v and 3.3v can they share a ground if they are getting power from different sources. Ie, if the 3.3v is coming from the prop board and the 5v is coming from an external source? I put it as selectable as well for linking the grounds so it shouldn't be a problem either way I know we talked about not having a common ground with the slaves for 5v and 24v, but that was due to the relays right?
I don't recommend hand soldering 0603 resistors. It can be done, I have done it, but they are small and require a light touch with an iron or tweezers. If you are doing a new design and plan to hand populate the board then use something larger if you can. 1206 or 0805 are better and easier to handle.
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Timothy D. Swieter, E.I. www.brilldea.com - Prop Blade, LED Painter, RGB LEDs, 3.0" LCD Composite video display, eProto for SunSPOT www.tdswieter.com
Comments
Yep I live in Calgary, AB. I work as an Electrician to pay the bills. The jobs I could get with my Electrical Engineering Technology degree did not pay well and were not very interesting.
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My new unsecure propmod both 1x1 and full size arriving soon.
I best get to work on the software for it. Hope you can write the PC portion of it. I am going to be hard pressed to get the prop part done. Mid June to early September are my busiest time.
it is not the ignitors i am thinking you may have problems with voltage levels. It is the logic it does not take much current over 100' of wire to drop the voltage to low.
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My new unsecure propmod both 1x1 and full size arriving soon.
as for them lighting up. i have seen this happen a lot. it takes very little to light them up.
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My new unsecure propmod both 1x1 and full size arriving soon.
I will look into getting surface mounts. I need to order some solder paste and do some experimenting with the reflow method and if I can get that to work, it may be in my best interest to go with surface mounts for those anyway. I suppose I can put the option of both in there, have the pads there for surface mount with a thru hole in them if I go the other way. I'm really starting to like surface mounts though after I leaned to use them.
Post Edited (chaosgk) : 5/15/2009 4:44:54 AM GMT
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My new unsecure propmod both 1x1 and full size arriving soon.
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My new unsecure propmod both 1x1 and full size arriving soon.
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My new unsecure propmod both 1x1 and full size arriving soon.
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My new unsecure propmod both 1x1 and full size arriving soon.
I'm looking for cheap surface mounts right now. The 0603 size resistor seems a bit small to work with after having to put 1000 or so of them on. I'm looking at the 1206 size, seems a little more reasonable to work with. I have big hands so I loath having to work with micro stuff. Do I need to provide the drivers on the master with their own power or does the prop have enough to supply all of them and the status led's?
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My new unsecure propmod both 1x1 and full size arriving soon.
not sure what you mean. the prop can supply 50mA on each pin.
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My new unsecure propmod both 1x1 and full size arriving soon.
Using a switcher also means you only have to run one voltage to the slaves and have much less heat produced.
btw - I hope you never have to turn on all the relays in a slave at one time. The 5V regulator would have to be pretty hefty to handle that. What is the current draw of the relay coil?
The master console will need 5V for the line driver chips and 3.3V for the prop. The current required is reasonably low so it should not be a problem.
If the matches ignite at 12V you may want to consider having a 12V battery in each slave. I know that is quite a few batteries but it saves a lot of wiring, gets around the voltage drop in long cables, reduces the size of capacitors needed in the slaves, and provides some redundancy.
I'll have to look and see what the relays draw for power, but it's pretty small. I can't imagine any reason all relays would have to turn on at once so that shouldnt' be a problem.
Why does the prop need 3.3v? The prop dev board I have has a 6-9v power input on it and a couple of 5v and 3.3v power regulators on it. I was wondering if I can use the 5.5v that is already supplied by the prop board to run the drivers and LED's or if I need a seperate 5v supply for those.
As for main power. If the battery is by you use a standard wall switch. They are cheap and designed to take heavy currents.
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My new unsecure propmod both 1x1 and full size arriving soon.
Post Edited (mctrivia) : 5/15/2009 2:11:39 PM GMT
Good thing you are both keeping an eye on things.
I had to use pretty small traces to fit everything coming off the drivers going to the jacks so hopefully they will etch ok.·
Formula for best value is
(Vin-Vled)/Iled
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My new unsecure propmod both 1x1 and full size arriving soon.
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My new unsecure propmod both 1x1 and full size arriving soon.
Need to upload large images or movies for use in the forum. you can do so at propmodule.com/upload.html for free.
If you want to use surface mount resisters I would recomend buying 1 of these kits
http://www.analogtechnologies.com/resistorkits.htm
I purchased there 0603 resister and cap kit when i first started surface mount work. excellent case and they have every single possible value at 1% error. now i buy parts by the real and string off a couple hundred into the compartments when I empty 1.
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My new unsecure propmod both 1x1 and full size arriving soon.
Need to upload large images or movies for use in the forum. you can do so at propmodule.com/upload.html for free.
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Timothy D. Swieter, E.I.
www.brilldea.com - Prop Blade, LED Painter, RGB LEDs, 3.0" LCD Composite video display, eProto for SunSPOT
www.tdswieter.com