Is this a record??
Hugh
Posts: 362
I had a bit of tidy this morning and found all of these Prop boards that I have killed in the seven years of using the Prop. Is this a record?! ;-)
900 x 675 - 336K
Comments
Tell my wife they don't cost very much.
I know. They've all been used for at least three different projects, more often than not installed in inaccessible places. The surviving / 'final' ones are wired with jumper wires.
Probably not. It's not many over 7 years if you experiment allot. When I first started I killed 3 proto boards in a month. LOL
Leon,
How the heck does the wiring contribute to killing the Props?
In my experience one easy way to kill a Prop is to have current pass through the Vss pins or the Vdd pins. I don't think the Propeller cares how the wires look. It does care about the voltage and current on its pins.
Is a messy looking wiring harness more likely to produced damaging voltages and currents than tidy wiring harnesses?
As I think back on the times I killed Propeller chips (and I think I've beat Hugh here but don't tell anyone), I think the chips would have been just as dead if my wires were tidy as if the wires were messy.
IMO, The wiring should get the job done. If you like tidy wires you're free to spend time making them tidy. Often I'm more concerned about getting the programming to work correctly than I am concerned about the wires' aesthetics.
I have been burned by sloppy soldering. If a solder joint is too large, it can short to the copper pour on the Propeller Proto Boards.
Quite right, the Propeller does not care what your wiring looks like. Neither does any other component. Neither does the wiring itself.
Of course, philosophically none of that cares what voltage or current goes where. It just does what it does. We care though, we want the thing to do what we want.
But really, don't you find that if your wiring and construction is a haphazard, chaotic mess you soon lose track of what is connected where and how things might randomly be shorted and connected to the wrong places. Or not connected where they should be. All of a sudden accidents happen and life is full of surprises.
Like the rest of life, neatness and order are a great help in minimizing accidents and surprises.
Mind you, I should not talk, I am very bad at the neatness and order thing. On the other hand, that's how I know it's a good idea:)
In the extreme even neat orderly layout will cause things to fail. Think ground loops, the reason for decoupling in the right place etc, etc.
Hugh, Have you heard of ChipQuik?
I purchased some based on Leon's recommendation and I think it works great.
I've removed several Propeller chips with the stuff and Leon was right about how well it works.
You could use some ChipQuick and purchase some extra chips to replace the damaged ones.
Like Hugh, I use multicolored wires. IMO, it's just as easy to see which wire connects where using a colored wire as it is when using a ribbon cable. I think the different colored wire makes finding what's connected where even easier than if using tidy ribbon cable.
When I first started building electronic circuits seven years ago, I initially laid out the wires in nice neat lines on my proto boards. I soon found my nice neat lines made if very difficult to add additional connections since the nice and tidy wires blocked the holes I now needed to use for a new connections. I soon started leaving some slack in the wires running across my proto boards. This made modifying the circuit much easier but it didn't look as nice.
I have lots of projects with wires which look very messy but they work just fine. I admit the messy wires bother me but I don't think making the wires nice and tidy would be the best use of my time.
1. Why do you ask?
2. Do you want to become the record holder for the most destroyed Propeller Boards?
3. Why do you seek such fame?
4. How much can you afford to invest in achieving fame?
5. I have a couple of Propeller boards floating around with a few bad i/o pins. Are they considered ruined or good?
6. If a board is working fine, but cluttered with bad soldering, is it considered ruined?
+++++++
Gotta go... my dog is growling at me. Not sure if he is reading this or just wants a walk.
My guess is to console those of us who have also killed Propeller chips. Hugh was letting us know we're not alone.
I'm also guessing Hugh thinks of us as his friends and thought some of us would find interest in his setbacks.
He's also shared his successes which I've also appreciated.
I have seen sloppy wiring cause problems for troubleshooting as well. If there is a rat's nest you need to move around just to see something, you could be unplugging wires that will short out. Poof!
My destructive phase was with BasicStamps. By the time the Propeller arrived, I had acquired enough experience and knowledge to slow down the rate of sudden disasters.
One can post lots of advice, but it still seems that experience is the final lesson.
Perfect!
Hey, I've got some dead bodies laying around too. It's no big deal, so long as you are learning and having fun!
There is a glow gained from something the works, and stays working. The look of something means very little to this world where all things must have a shiny case (begining with iXXXXX). I always know that the "Alan, that is really good" is speak for "What is that loony up to this time (and what is a Z80 anyway)"
In my 8+ years working with the Propeller, I only have 1 dead prop, a QFN who was killed by applying too much IR heat while attempting SMT - the top of the chip blistered, so I have assumed he's dead.
Of course I do have a prop with only 16 I/O pins working...(I don't think this counts as a dead prop tho')
http://forums.parallax.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=102942&d=1374404802&thumb=1
http://forums.parallax.com/showthread.php/149255-P8X16A-DIP24-16xI-O-Propeller-now-working-)?highlight=p8x16a
I agree there's something artistic and very inspiring about these photos. There have been some fantastic photos posted over the years to this forum - but wires ( and hot glue ) really speak to the intent...
The Propeller has for me proven to be a very durable MCU. Though I have killed more than a few voltage regulators, EEPROM's, and secondary IC's on my Prop based projects.
Do not feel bad about it, we all kill some of our IC's from time to time. It is part of the price for the fun of experimenting with untested designs.
I couldn't live with the loss so I desoldered the Prop and mounted a tiny mezzanine board directly over it that was just large enough to hold a DIP Prop and two caps. To this day the crazy thing is still running strong.