From db857b905af266d8afd74a297dae97ede844ea9c Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Todd Wolfson Date: Sat, 7 Apr 2018 20:35:47 -0700 Subject: [PATCH] Completed article --- articles/debugging-my-first-circuit.md | 79 ++++++++++++++++++++++---- 1 file changed, 69 insertions(+), 10 deletions(-) diff --git a/articles/debugging-my-first-circuit.md b/articles/debugging-my-first-circuit.md index d1b5cd61..39639f30 100644 --- a/articles/debugging-my-first-circuit.md +++ b/articles/debugging-my-first-circuit.md @@ -8,12 +8,14 @@ I've been slowly picking up electronics over the past year. At this year's Burning Man, 3 out of 5 EL wires broke on me. This time, instead of e-cycling them, I decided to use it as a learning opportunity. -If you've never done electronics before, SparkFun is a great resource. This video got me back into it and the rest of their lessons are great: +If you've never done electronics before, SparkFun is a great resource. This video got me back into it (like me learning about [Firebug][] for the first time) and the rest of their lessons are great: +[Firebug]: https://getfirebug.com/ + ## 2017/10/11 The first step was isolating the problem. The EL wire I have is 1 circuit + battery holder and 1 wire which clips in. @@ -56,22 +58,79 @@ So the problem is the broken button I had only soldered once before this point and that was for jumper headers so I was taking things slow ## 2017/10/22 +The idea I had to verify the button truly was the problem was to replace it with wires as a proof of concept ------------- +As a result, I: -As the trope goes, I've built a lot with software and wanted to start pushing myself into the physical world. +- Verified wires would fit through button's casing hole +- Desoldered button +- Soldered in wires +- Reconstructured chassis (so we could add batteries/power) +- Touched wires together -I've been trying to do it on/off for many years (up until a few months ago, I still had an unused soldering iron from 6 years ago). +It worked!! -I think the issue was all the kits out there are recipe-based (i.e. here are these parts, wire them up like this, and we're done) and not concept/application based which is how I learn best. +TODO: Add video here (maybe Imgur gifv) -I started to actually make progress when I saw this video from SparkFun: +For double sanity, we hooked up the button to the mutlimeter and confirmed it was still spotty +## Some time between 2017/10/22 and 2017/12/20 +Now that the issue was identified, we decided to order replacement buttons -It was akin to someone showing me [Firebug][] for the first time (or maybe using `window.alert()` before that). For the non-crusty folks, Firebug is the predecessor to all modern dev tools +However, clearly this wasn't going to future proof the items for it happening again -With the knowledge about multimeters, I finally knew how to understand what was causing problems (e.g. voltages, continuity, determining resistance necessary) +At the time, I thought the issue was the buttons being too tall so my solution was to buy a shorter button, hot glue it to the top of the case, and run wires to the PCB's holes -[Firebug]: https://getfirebug.com/ +I'm still a little doubtful that that was the problem (e.g. could have been dust from Burning Man getting into the button's internal circuits) + +So I might wind up taking even more precautions in the future (e.g. taping over button's hole) + +Anyway, at this point I bought momentary buttons to get started + +## 2017/12/20 +The buttons had arrived and I did a simple placement test to verify it would fit + +## 2017/12/31 +I hot glued a button to the top of the case + +I verified its connectivity afterwards (e.g. heat could damage circuit) + +Don't worry, I still went out on NYE ;) + +# 2018/02/14 +Delay caused by wanting to buy a fume extractor and personal life + +Also purchased a new soldering iron for better temperature control (Hakko Fx888-D is wonderful). My old solder was a Weller with no knobs, only a plug for the wall outlet + +Desoldered EL test wires + +# 2018/02/19 +The following is directly from my notes: + +- Delay due to purchasing wire strippers and solid core wire (24 AWG from hardware store, couldn't find 22 AWG =( +- Learned to "wet" wires before soldering + - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkjMK26ROcM +- Soldered wire to button +- Ran wires through holes +- Tried to solder again but the traces weren't accessible (soo much wicked off or burned over) + - I now know how to deal with this (see Adafruit troubleshooting later on) +- Dropped temp to 650 +- Soldered into alternative holes but those weren't connected to the proper traces +- Tried another board +- Desoldered button partially as well as snipped ends as well as broke physically + - I was trying to avoid ruining traces. Unfortunately, I still did +- Soldered 1 wire fine but trouble with other one + - Solder was getting onto wire but refusing to go on pad so it would stay on wire or iron +- Got frustrated multiple times +- Finally read through https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-guide-excellent-soldering/common-problems +- First tried isopropyl alcohol then soldering again +- No luck +- Got frustrated and read some more +- Tried scraping with knife and saw copper lead exposed as mentioned towards bottom of article +- Exposed enough copper lead and soldered to it +- Closed up case, inserted batteries, and pressed button +- LED was displaced so could barely see it +- Connected to EL wire +- IT FUCKING WORKS!! -I continued to built circuits on breadboards from recipe-like projects but was starting to understand concepts without being sheepish towards the circuit +TODO: Add final image