I just want to take a moment to say thank you. Your open source, low budget, and simple explanations as to why you're doing what you're doing makes daunting projects like this seem within the grasp of poor aspiring engineers. So thank you!
I subscribed when I realised that this WASN'T one of those videos which starts with "Hey guys, what's happening?" videos. Instead, it was intelligent and articulate, and I look forward to some more ... whenever you're ready.
The electronics side of RUclips is the best. If you like this check oit The Signal Path, Mike's Electric Stuff, Eevblog, scanlime, w2aew, devttyS0 and many others
39:59 and people thought Julian Illet's reflow method using halogen lamps was ghetto... Bravo sir. I asked for something like this exact method in response, and you happened to provide!
Regarding Kicad zone fill: you can press the 'B' key to fill/refill the zone at any time. Very convenient. Have a look at Preferences -> Hotkeys -> List Hotkeys to find more useful shortcuts. Ctrl+B removes the fills. Very informative video as always, thanks for making them!
Your videos are always an incredible inspiration to me, always totally full of extremely useful and interesting content, with tons of effort and passion just oozing with every frame. I hope your move goes well.
FYI, you don't have to add those fake test point components in the schematic editor in order to put plated mounting holes on your board. You can simple use the "add footprints" button on the toolbar on the right (4th from the top that looks like an IC), find the mounting hole footprint, and place it where you want it. Then hover your mouse pointer over the mounting hole, press "E" and make sure you select "Pad 1" from the "Clarify selection" pop-up menu. In this properties menu, you can assign any net you like (such as GND) to this pad. Also, it's a lot easier to use hot keys "B" to fill zones and "Ctrl-B" to unfill zones. Or you can right-click on the zone outline to get a context menu that will also give you that option.
You CAN add test points in PCBNew that way, however, at some stage you'll want to update the netlist from the schematic after having deleted some components, and for that you'll choose PCBNew's "delete unneeded components", which will remove the test points. So it's better to have test points (and mounting holes) on the schematic, I've found.
New users of PCBNew will also want to know that the UI, especially the right-click menu, has different features depending on which graphics renderer is active (View > Legacy renderer vs one of the Modern ones). Not to mention that some of the routing modes are only available in one or other of the render modes.
Keep up the great work - your knowledge and dedication to demonstrating open source tech is much appreciated. Hope you have a smooth transition to the new location and look forward to the interim videos!
Love this video. Did you ever do more with this? I did search the channel and couldn't find anything. Personally, I'd love to see a full FPGA design (without the RasPi) - with all the filtering/freq selection/LCD driver, etc. in the FPGA... Could be a fun DSP project.
If you want to fill or refresh the copper pour, you can also press 'B' on your keyboard. That's usually faster than running a full DRC job, but impossible to figure out if you don't already know it. 🙂
Whoa, great video! I wish you made these more frequently, but I can see how that one must have taken forever to do, given how much you progressed in the project. I personally really would like to have more time for projects like these… All the FPGA stuff is really interesting.
Glad to hear we're getting you back to blighty. Not the most cheerful time to arrive but wish you well in your job hunt and looking forward to future videos. Would love to get more basics/beginners stuff on sdr.
Jose Barros the lead-free stuff I use comes in small tubs and is much more viscous. It also comes with the advantage of being able to scrape excess back for future use (and being able to keep it in the freezer).
The one I use actually comes in small jars, but it is exactly like you describe, never know what I'm ordering though, I have ordered other similar jars which are the same liquidity stuff of the syringes. Don't even know what is the spec I should look for, could it be "Improved fine pitch coalescence" referenced on some datasheets?
Yeah that solder paste has WAY too much flux in it as it should be more like toothpaste rather than being so liquid. Different kinds of paste make a big difference to the result. The one i like is the Loctite brand stuff with lead.
Thank you so much for this informative show about the fpga it really opened this field for me! I'm sad to hear that you are moving I hope you could find a kickass job back in the UK. I would love to see some videos explaining jtag, and verilog development in the context of that fpga as i also got one as well(the lower end version) and love to follow on some cool project :) Cheers.
That was one epic video covering a great cross-section of topics! Well done! I totally feel your pain on the Kicad libraries and 3D models moving target. While I've achieved satisfying results with Kicad, a large proportion of time spent was wasted following the documentation's way of doing things, ,which later turned out to be obsolete and wrong.
Yeah... KiCad has been a mess for a long time, but I see signs of amazing progress just in the last few months. The libraries used to be a disaster, but they're getting much much better. But there's a lot of old blog posts out there with now-inaccurate information. The library maintainers are really helpful though.
I really appreciate the amount of efforts you put into making these videos. Hope you get the job you dreamed of! Meanwhile, I’d like to see some basic videos about using FPGAs and also DSP fundamentals.
I found loads of information and tit-bits that need to be read up on later (later, being in a couple of minutes) in this video. Great stuff Joel and thankyou for posting! Btw, an advert popped-up during the video reference a company called Alorium who make arduino/arduino IDE compatible fpga boards. Had a quick look, as you do, and found the board model Hinj to be quite interesting.....worth taking a look at! :)
The cost to make three boards with stencils is simply amazing. The cost when I got started required approval from a VP or the President of the company because it was so insane. Now you or I can just go out a make boards left and right for the price of a Happy meal at MacDonalds. The problem with lead free solder / solder paste is the difficulty in cleaning the flux. I worked at a place that was hell bent on using a dish washer to clean boards and the results were conductive paths between signals (Not meant to be connected) Hi voltage stuff arced between points. The nit wit chief of this company issued tooth brushes to the assembler crew who tried to clean the water soluable flux before putting them in the washer. This didn't really improve things. By the way when you are done (using lead free solder) all the connections look awful. With lead tin solder good connections look shiny and bad ones look like lead free connections. I forget exactly what was done to make the dishwasher work. Something to do with processing the water ahead of time but I would never advise anyone to use that garbage for prototypes. Oh and you clean Rosin Core with 99% isopropyl Alcohol. (EBAY they have cases of the stuff) The amount of lead you absorb by handling a roll of it? I'm not sure its even measurable. One thing I would be aware of is breathing in flux fumes. Your not going to breath in Lead (The temp to vaporize it is higher) If your hand soldering with your face over the board sucking in fumes your doing damage to your lungs. I think smoking cigars would be better. They make "soldering fans" that suck up the smoke but its actually just a fan pointed away from you. Solder paste is (I admit) easy to get on your skin, cloths etc so maybe glove up if your really paranoid. Anyway don't scare the kids! Lead is not like handling Plutonium. Oh and you can use a toaster oven to do your boards. Put them on top of the over to warm them up then into the actual oven. Keep a close eye on the components. When the Lead Tin combo melt all the parts will move slightly. Thats when you know its done. *Note there are controllers that you cobble onto a toaster oven that do this but this is not required.
There is a perfluoridated oil that can get hot enough to melt solder... But I like the toaster idea much better.. Let me just make my last pop tart first 😊 I'd still like to find more of that oil for other reasons if you know where I can still get it?🤓
This video you just created on SDR hardware forced my heart to create a Patreon account and pledge to you monthy. Warm regards. I hope you become the next Dave Jones (EEVBlog Guy)
Thanks for considering supporting the channel. It's a big encouragement to have folks supporting the channel. At the moment the channel Patreon is configured to take per-video donations, because given that it's not my main job, and I have lots of other commitments, I can't guarantee the amount of time I spend working on content, so it doesn't seem fair to take monthly donations. Anyway, I'm glad you're enjoying the content!
This is hilarious! Last year I designed the same concept of FPGA module with a motherboard breakout... But I used the Cyclone V FPGA and an atmel SAM E70
Good video, I wish you the best of luck with moving back to the UK and all the logistics surrounding it. Do you think the setup that you have built in this video can be used to create a open source oscilloscope and signal generator?
Thanks for the good wishes. It certainly would be possible to use the rig as an oscilloscope, though you'd want to add various front end amplifiers and filters to it. As a sig-gen it would work pretty well as-is.
This is the first of your videos I have ever seen...and I loved it. I wish I had some of the resources you do because it would make things so much easier for me. I want to build a SDR for mobile use, but it has a number of requirements that are not usual on a "normal" SDR project. For one thing, it must tolerate extreme temperatures ( -55° to 125° C ) , cover 500 Khz to 450 Mhz, all modes INCLUDING FM STEREO on receive only, have multiple USB connections...probably 2 would be enough..., and have all the computer resources required as part of the unit. Being a "PRE-Novice" with all things SDR, I am more than groping in the dark...more like completely lost. Though your video has given me a degree of hope. Also, I have KiCAD installed on my computer, but I need to design a few circuits that use Vacuum Tubes (Valves) and I cannot locate a library of the sockets to mount the tubes in. Some of the tubes I might use at a later date even have different size pins on them. Could you provide any assistance to point me in the right direction so that I can do layouts with the tubes? Sorry to hear you must return to England....not that there is anything bad or wrong with England, just that the way you stated it, it sounds like your move is a painful one for you and that you really didn't want to go back. In hopes that things go well for you and that you will be able to make more videos, I will subscribe to your channel. 73, Wayne WB4RHA
Man! Hat's off to you. I'm in awe. Where do you get the energy to do all of this; not to mention to document the whole process in video's like this one? Thank you very much.
Thank you, I really enjoyed this video, it covered a lot of topics that are interesting to me. Sorry to hear you won't be making more like it for a while, but best wishes for the move. I would love to see some more in depth KiCad and FreeCAD videos when you are able to!
The “kick in the teeth” bit… Oh man, that’s brutal, but I have to admit, I LOL’d in sardonic sympathy. Those parts ain’t cheap, either, so stocking up now will be a bit costly. FWIW, you can get MG solder paste on amazon (US), which includes the plunger and a tip. Also, you can pop off the tabs of OSHPark PCBs with a pair of needle nose, then file down the mouse bites. I just rub my boards on the concrete floor of my shop to get rid of the sharp points. Janky, but that’s how I roll most of the time. =)
Thanks for the great video! I tried to do repeat this project with BlackIce II board and I noticed something strange. I used a T-shaped BNC connector to pass a signal from signal generator to both FPGA and an Oscilloscope (I use same signal generator and oscilloscope you did) so I could compare how an output signal changes comparing to input signal. Oscilloscope shows that the output signal is an inverse (180 degree phase shifted) of the input sine signal. This effect doesn't change with frequency or signal shape. Could you please explain why this happens?
Love the video (and everything else you do). In terms of the coding approach to CAD, do you find it quicker than the more common graphical way or is it force of habit?
So I'm not going to say the code approach is right for everyone. But it seems to work well for me - which surprised me at first, but I have done a fair amount of graphics programming over the years. With a parametric modeler like SolidWorks or the FreeCAD Part Design workbench, you define sketches and constraints and use these to make a list of features in the object. I noticed that a lot of complex sketches turns into very little code. For example, the OpenSCAD frame design is 280 lines of code. More than half of that is the code for PCB models. So you can define extremely complex geometry in only a couple of screen-fulls of code. Whereas, a visual version of the frame would be quite a complex part made of many sketches and features. Then in a parametric modeller, if you have a part with list of 10 features and you modify or delete the 2nd feature in the list, all hell breaks loose with broken dependencies. Whereas in code, it's a lot easier to tie up all these loose ends when you make changes to the basic structure of the part. Code is much easier to parametrize with constants, lends itself much better to version control and merging modifications from multiple designers. So for all these reasons, even though it seems crazy to think that code would compare favorably to visual CAD design, I'm finding it works really well for me. Much better than I expected.
Super interesting, I've just started in a grad job working extensively with Solidworks . I can certainly see the advantage there coding wise, I suppose the only (real) downside is the steeper learning curve. Do you know of anything similar for Solidworks, google didn't show me anything upon a quick search. Thanks for your reply!
Great video, really in-depth and informative, but... That solder paste bit really made me cringe. You have to apply that stuff like you were screen printing it. Never put it directly on the holes of the stencil. Even less use that card or anything to push it through. What you do is put some on the top of the stencil and use the card as a squeegee and rake it over the openings *once* and then try to lift the stencil without moving it laterally. Also, when you are reworking bad solder joints a bit of flux will save you a lot of headache. HTH and cheers for the great videos!
dont you need a local oscillator which signal is mixed with the input signal and then converted to baseband? and arent there two ADCs needed, one for the inphase and one for the quatrature signal?
I'll have to look at kicad, would it happen to have library support for the ICE40 fpga's? I'm interested in making my own board for the little beastie.
Sorry it's not available. The firmware for those 37-wires is top secret. Contact my sales representative to sign our NDA, then we can talk about a volume licensing deal.
36:00 Is Pb the new Hg? Too much scare about a relatively harmless Element. Normally the pure metal doesn't do anything to your health (except it comes flying at a high speed or a bigger chunk of it falls of the workbench on to your toes). To get a high enough bioavailability, you need to have lead compounds (just like it is with Hg). These can be quite nasty and they can get created over time when Pb is ends up in our environment. These lead compounds may end up in the air/water or are then enriched in the food chain and we are at the top of the food chain. And because people are too lazy/ignorant/stupid to dispose or recycle their electronic waste in a environment friendly manner, the lead was banned in electronics.
You can create auto-connected hidden pins for any net name you like (like VCC), and was customary during the days when 5V logic dominated. Nowadays it's regarded as a bad idea, because you now typically want to connect a component's ground and power pins to project-specific distinctly named ground and power nets.
Wow thanks so much! I always like your video's but this one is so long and full of info, incredible! Thanks! One question you always seem to advertise the Chinese sites as low cost but in the Netherlands all these products above 20$ will be picked out by customs and you have to pay clearing, tax and administrative costs... Is this not a problem in the UK? Thanks again!
UK Customs is just verry lax. That's the reason why many express-Options like "Germany Express" at Gearbest are shipped to the UK in Containers, taken through customs and then transported via Trucks to the right EU-Country where they are given to a local post service.
OpenTechLab haha oke so it's one or the other then... Delivery to my doorstep is often very fast, even our customs is fast... Expensive though! Good luck moving back home. Keep up the good work!
With that viscosity solder paste the stencil really does nothing to help; as you see its all over the pads anyways. The stuff I generally use is really stiff, and you should keep it in the fridge to keep it nice and firm. Now, generally it's no problem though, the soldermask will make it go where it should unless there's much to much and generally, just doing a line of paste across the pads will be fine. And for doing the actual reflowing, a simple hot air station and a temp probe for the multimeter is perfectly sufficient for one off or a small number of boards. You really don't need to follow the temp profile to the letter either, just in the ballpark is fine.
it really is a shame that this board and most other cheap fpga boards don't really expose a lot of the io capability, it would be really great to see some 0ohm jumpers to configure per bank io voltage and maybe do length matching of differential pairs, you wouldn't even have have them couple particular close wich might hinder single ended use, a couple unpopulated ldo footprints also wouldnt hurt, the lattice machxo2 and 3 breakout boards were quite nice in that regard expecially for interfacing data converters high speed serial is one of the major advantages fpgas offer
During the reflow it would have been cool if you could have done picture-in-picture of sigrok-meter whilst the main pic is the paste melting.... that would have been cool (well, hot actually). Not really done much with CAD (it's part of why I'm watching this) But this takes me back the the early 90s... Open S CAD reminds me a bit of the POV-Ray language... and CAD query has hints of the code I used to write in C++ (it'd be Python if I did it now) for generating POV-Ray files. (Sorry, I don't think I've got a point, just an observation) Damnit! I used to have "a million" of those 50 ohm coax terminators and I threw them away... "don't need any of this old 10BASE2 Ethernet connectors anymore". :( IS THAT A BLOB OF COTTON WOOL ON YOUR MICROPHONE???!!!! Really interesting, video, I'm not sure if I'll ever DO any of this stuff... but there's plenty of pointers to other stuff that should keep me amused for a good long time. Keep up The Great Work.
Forgive if mentioned already, but having just watching one chap with very stiff paste, and yours,.. too thin by far. There must be a happy medium for use with stencils. I would say that flux is cheaper than the lead beads. ergo the quest for profit overtaking common sense. BTW on Thingiverse, I found an SCAD based Parametric Project Box maker. Love it . Pick your dimesion, front and rear panels, name plate, vent holes, holes and windows for knobs and displays. Grrreat stuff. Regards
In that case they can't be included in the kicad library due to the licensing. Also the Molex STEP file for the connector has excessively complex geometry. My model is a simplified representation.
Even your description of how you investigated the board is interesting and useful. I love how you don't just go, "I googled around and got the data sheet". That doesn't help people.
you can buy some of boards from AliExpress they deliver world wide. I also build list of interesting fpga low/med/high cost boards if you interested. Alinx support only Chinese site, try to use translate in chrome, En site may miss a lot of products.
your stencil was not been flat to the pcb, that's why the nasty spread, next time press the stencil to the pcb and don't poor the paste in the holes but drag it to the holes
Oh I know. Incredible software. But I wouldn't want to have my designs tied into closed software unless I'm forced to. It won't take long before the current version goes obsolete, my license expires, the OS it runs on goes end of life, and I would lose access to my work. That's what happened to me when I previously used SolidWorks. For me, the OSS thing is a fun little game I like to play. What's the most crazy/awesome challenge I can take on just with OSS? It's happened many times that I've seen an OSS application transition from inferior to passable to competitive to preferable. And it's fun for me to dig through the OSS treasure chest to see what's on offer, and then share the results!
Anyone wanting to be inspired by what an FPGA can do, check out websdr.ewi.utwente.nl:8901/ This is a software defined radio implemented in a Spartan XC3S500E FPGA, sampling the whole spectrum from 0-30 MHz at the same time, and you can listen to any portion of it you want! There are three main IC's doing all the work - the Spartan FPGA, an LTC2216 A/D converter clocked at 77.76 MHz, and a gigabit Ethernet chip to allow the WebSDR software to work. Click on the "see here for background" link at the top of the page to see the evolution of this project. Truly amazing what the builder has accomplished here.
As a native english speaker you may think so. But keep in mind that the origin of KiCAD is in France and a lot of contributions come from CERN in Geneva in the French-speaking part of Switzerland. And here you can hear how Wayne Stambaugh, the KiCad Project Lead Developer pronounces KiCAD: ruclips.net/video/nL0yTvJKA5c/видео.html
![[008] Prototype Enclosures with FreeCAD & OpenSCAD](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/38Z7E8OcVd8/mqdefault.jpg)
![[008] Prototype Enclosures with FreeCAD & OpenSCAD](/img/tr.png)
I just want to take a moment to say thank you. Your open source, low budget, and simple explanations as to why you're doing what you're doing makes daunting projects like this seem within the grasp of poor aspiring engineers. So thank you!
There are not so many youtubers out there who could script their contents in this beautiful way. You are a genius person indeed.
I subscribed when I realised that this WASN'T one of those videos which starts with "Hey guys, what's happening?" videos. Instead, it was intelligent and articulate, and I look forward to some more ... whenever you're ready.
The electronics side of RUclips is the best. If you like this check oit The Signal Path, Mike's Electric Stuff, Eevblog, scanlime, w2aew, devttyS0 and many others
This was actually a better KiCad tutorial than 5 or 6 other videos that actually have KiCad in the title. Thank you!
39:59 and people thought Julian Illet's reflow method using halogen lamps was ghetto... Bravo sir. I asked for something like this exact method in response, and you happened to provide!
Regarding Kicad zone fill: you can press the 'B' key to fill/refill the zone at any time. Very convenient. Have a look at Preferences -> Hotkeys -> List Hotkeys to find more useful shortcuts. Ctrl+B removes the fills.
Very informative video as always, thanks for making them!
Your videos are always an incredible inspiration to me, always totally full of extremely useful and interesting content, with tons of effort and passion just oozing with every frame. I hope your move goes well.
FYI, you don't have to add those fake test point components in the schematic editor in order to put plated mounting holes on your board. You can simple use the "add footprints" button on the toolbar on the right (4th from the top that looks like an IC), find the mounting hole footprint, and place it where you want it. Then hover your mouse pointer over the mounting hole, press "E" and make sure you select "Pad 1" from the "Clarify selection" pop-up menu. In this properties menu, you can assign any net you like (such as GND) to this pad.
Also, it's a lot easier to use hot keys "B" to fill zones and "Ctrl-B" to unfill zones. Or you can right-click on the zone outline to get a context menu that will also give you that option.
You CAN add test points in PCBNew that way, however, at some stage you'll want to update the netlist from the schematic after having deleted some components, and for that you'll choose PCBNew's "delete unneeded components", which will remove the test points. So it's better to have test points (and mounting holes) on the schematic, I've found.
New users of PCBNew will also want to know that the UI, especially the right-click menu, has different features depending on which graphics renderer is active (View > Legacy renderer vs one of the Modern ones). Not to mention that some of the routing modes are only available in one or other of the render modes.
Thanks for putting together this nice and insightful long-format video ! I really appreciate the huge effort you put in producing such content.
Keep up the great work - your knowledge and dedication to demonstrating open source tech is much appreciated. Hope you have a smooth transition to the new location and look forward to the interim videos!
Love this video. Did you ever do more with this? I did search the channel and couldn't find anything. Personally, I'd love to see a full FPGA design (without the RasPi) - with all the filtering/freq selection/LCD driver, etc. in the FPGA... Could be a fun DSP project.
Great channel, just found it. Really enjoy the videos a lot. You're very curious and thats fantastic.
The content you're producing is great! Hope your move goes as smooth as possible
Thanks!
If you want to fill or refresh the copper pour, you can also press 'B' on your keyboard. That's usually faster than running a full DRC job, but impossible to figure out if you don't already know it. 🙂
Best hour spent in a very long time, Sorry to hear that you are forced to relocate. Thank you for awesome open source content!
Extremely in-depth and insightful, thank you for producing these videos.
I really hope you can continue with the channel. Your videos are absolutely excellent. Thanks!
Whoa, great video! I wish you made these more frequently, but I can see how that one must have taken forever to do, given how much you progressed in the project.
I personally really would like to have more time for projects like these… All the FPGA stuff is really interesting.
I'm only 30 seconds in, but I already know I'm going to love this video!
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Glad to hear we're getting you back to blighty. Not the most cheerful time to arrive but wish you well in your job hunt and looking forward to future videos. Would love to get more basics/beginners stuff on sdr.
To refill zones, just press B. Also Prefernces->Hotkeys->List Current Keys is your friend ;)
There is a less liquid form of solder paste which usually works better when using stencils
Jose Barros the lead-free stuff I use comes in small tubs and is much more viscous. It also comes with the advantage of being able to scrape excess back for future use (and being able to keep it in the freezer).
The one I use actually comes in small jars, but it is exactly like you describe, never know what I'm ordering though, I have ordered other similar jars which are the same liquidity stuff of the syringes. Don't even know what is the spec I should look for, could it be "Improved fine pitch coalescence" referenced on some datasheets?
I just get cheap stuff from unknown brands, so I'm probably not the right person to ask!
Yeah that solder paste has WAY too much flux in it as it should be more like toothpaste rather than being so liquid.
Different kinds of paste make a big difference to the result. The one i like is the Loctite brand stuff with lead.
It's probably so liquid because it's being forced through far too small a needle, the paste clogs up and most of what you get out is flux.
Thank you so much for this informative show about the fpga it really opened this field for me!
I'm sad to hear that you are moving I hope you could find a kickass job back in the UK.
I would love to see some videos explaining jtag, and verilog development in the context of that fpga as i also got one as well(the lower end version) and love to follow on some cool project :) Cheers.
I LOVE your reflow oven!
That was one epic video covering a great cross-section of topics! Well done! I totally feel your pain on the Kicad libraries and 3D models moving target. While I've achieved satisfying results with Kicad, a large proportion of time spent was wasted following the documentation's way of doing things, ,which later turned out to be obsolete and wrong.
Yeah... KiCad has been a mess for a long time, but I see signs of amazing progress just in the last few months. The libraries used to be a disaster, but they're getting much much better. But there's a lot of old blog posts out there with now-inaccurate information. The library maintainers are really helpful though.
Thank you love from belagavi Karnataka India !
Pretty instructive and detailed video. Awesome channel with awesome topics. Thanks a lot.
Great video! Really loved it, I also been into SDR for last 2 years
The best videos! Keep them coming! I would love if you could cover the more basic programming in C.
I really appreciate the amount of efforts you put into making these videos. Hope you get the job you dreamed of! Meanwhile, I’d like to see some basic videos about using FPGAs and also DSP fundamentals.
Nice. Hope your moving going well.
I found loads of information and tit-bits that need to be read up on later (later, being in a couple of minutes) in this video. Great stuff Joel and thankyou for posting!
Btw, an advert popped-up during the video reference a company called Alorium who make arduino/arduino IDE compatible fpga boards. Had a quick look, as you do, and found the board model Hinj to be quite interesting.....worth taking a look at! :)
Oh and, awesome video man! really liked the effort done here!
The cost to make three boards with stencils is simply amazing. The cost when I got started required approval from a VP or the President of the company because it was so insane. Now you or I can just go out a make boards left and right for the price of a Happy meal at MacDonalds.
The problem with lead free solder / solder paste is the difficulty in cleaning the flux. I worked at a place that was hell bent on using a dish washer to clean boards and the results were conductive paths between signals (Not meant to be connected) Hi voltage stuff arced between points. The nit wit chief of this company issued tooth brushes to the assembler crew who tried to clean the water soluable flux before putting them in the washer. This didn't really improve things.
By the way when you are done (using lead free solder) all the connections look awful. With lead tin solder good connections look shiny and bad ones look like lead free connections. I forget exactly what was done to make the dishwasher work. Something to do with processing the water ahead of time but I would never advise anyone to use that garbage for prototypes. Oh and you clean Rosin Core with 99% isopropyl Alcohol. (EBAY they have cases of the stuff)
The amount of lead you absorb by handling a roll of it? I'm not sure its even measurable.
One thing I would be aware of is breathing in flux fumes. Your not going to breath in Lead (The temp to vaporize it is higher) If your hand soldering with your face over the board sucking in fumes your doing damage to your lungs. I think smoking cigars would be better. They make "soldering fans" that suck up the smoke but its actually just a fan pointed away from you.
Solder paste is (I admit) easy to get on your skin, cloths etc so maybe glove up if your really paranoid.
Anyway don't scare the kids! Lead is not like handling Plutonium.
Oh and you can use a toaster oven to do your boards. Put them on top of the over to warm them up then into the actual oven. Keep a close eye on the components. When the Lead Tin combo melt all the parts will move slightly. Thats when you know its done. *Note there are controllers that you cobble onto a toaster oven that do this but this is not required.
There is a perfluoridated oil that can get hot enough to melt solder... But I like the toaster idea much better..
Let me just make my last pop tart first 😊
I'd still like to find more of that oil for other reasons if you know where I can still get it?🤓
Fantastic video. Lots of really useful information and explanation. Good luck with the move.
Liked the video before hitting the play button 🙂 Good luck with your move.
I love the "fundamentals" idea. Perfect for beginners like me.:)
This video you just created on SDR hardware forced my heart to create a Patreon account and pledge to you monthy. Warm regards. I hope you become the next Dave Jones (EEVBlog Guy)
Thanks for considering supporting the channel. It's a big encouragement to have folks supporting the channel.
At the moment the channel Patreon is configured to take per-video donations, because given that it's not my main job, and I have lots of other commitments, I can't guarantee the amount of time I spend working on content, so it doesn't seem fair to take monthly donations.
Anyway, I'm glad you're enjoying the content!
This is hilarious! Last year I designed the same concept of FPGA module with a motherboard breakout... But I used the Cyclone V FPGA and an atmel SAM E70
Good video, I wish you the best of luck with moving back to the UK and all the logistics surrounding it.
Do you think the setup that you have built in this video can be used to create a open source oscilloscope and signal generator?
Thanks for the good wishes. It certainly would be possible to use the rig as an oscilloscope, though you'd want to add various front end amplifiers and filters to it. As a sig-gen it would work pretty well as-is.
This is the first of your videos I have ever seen...and I loved it. I wish I had some of the resources you do because it would make things so much easier for me. I want to build a SDR for mobile use, but it has a number of requirements that are not usual on a "normal" SDR project. For one thing, it must tolerate extreme temperatures ( -55° to 125° C ) , cover 500 Khz to 450 Mhz, all modes INCLUDING FM STEREO on receive only, have multiple USB connections...probably 2 would be enough..., and have all the computer resources required as part of the unit. Being a "PRE-Novice" with all things SDR, I am more than groping in the dark...more like completely lost. Though your video has given me a degree of hope.
Also, I have KiCAD installed on my computer, but I need to design a few circuits that use Vacuum Tubes (Valves) and I cannot locate a library of the sockets to mount the tubes in. Some of the tubes I might use at a later date even have different size pins on them. Could you provide any assistance to point me in the right direction so that I can do layouts with the tubes?
Sorry to hear you must return to England....not that there is anything bad or wrong with England, just that the way you stated it, it sounds like your move is a painful one for you and that you really didn't want to go back.
In hopes that things go well for you and that you will be able to make more videos, I will subscribe to your channel.
73,
Wayne WB4RHA
Quick tip: you can press b or control b to fill and unfill zones in kicad without having to run the DRC
Man! Hat's off to you. I'm in awe. Where do you get the energy to do all of this; not to mention to document the whole process in video's like this one? Thank you very much.
Thank you, I really enjoyed this video, it covered a lot of topics that are interesting to me. Sorry to hear you won't be making more like it for a while, but best wishes for the move. I would love to see some more in depth KiCad and FreeCAD videos when you are able to!
For sure! There's a lot more to cover about these
I often make my own mounting hole component so that the schematic can have really obvious mounting hole call outs on it.
The “kick in the teeth” bit… Oh man, that’s brutal, but I have to admit, I LOL’d in sardonic sympathy. Those parts ain’t cheap, either, so stocking up now will be a bit costly.
FWIW, you can get MG solder paste on amazon (US), which includes the plunger and a tip.
Also, you can pop off the tabs of OSHPark PCBs with a pair of needle nose, then file down the mouse bites. I just rub my boards on the concrete floor of my shop to get rid of the sharp points. Janky, but that’s how I roll most of the time. =)
Nice tips thanks! The floor is a bit too smooth in the current OpenTechLab basement, though. Some people always seem to have the best equipment ;-)
OpenTechLab just use a small paving slab.
Thanks for the great video! I tried to do repeat this project with BlackIce II board and I noticed something strange. I used a T-shaped BNC connector to pass a signal from signal generator to both FPGA and an Oscilloscope (I use same signal generator and oscilloscope you did) so I could compare how an output signal changes comparing to input signal. Oscilloscope shows that the output signal is an inverse (180 degree phase shifted) of the input sine signal. This effect doesn't change with frequency or signal shape. Could you please explain why this happens?
This stuff is for engineers. Few of the rest of us can follow it
Adding a layer of sand to the bottom of the pan for the PCB to rest on will provide a more even heating.
Love the video (and everything else you do). In terms of the coding approach to CAD, do you find it quicker than the more common graphical way or is it force of habit?
So I'm not going to say the code approach is right for everyone. But it seems to work well for me - which surprised me at first, but I have done a fair amount of graphics programming over the years.
With a parametric modeler like SolidWorks or the FreeCAD Part Design workbench, you define sketches and constraints and use these to make a list of features in the object. I noticed that a lot of complex sketches turns into very little code. For example, the OpenSCAD frame design is 280 lines of code. More than half of that is the code for PCB models. So you can define extremely complex geometry in only a couple of screen-fulls of code. Whereas, a visual version of the frame would be quite a complex part made of many sketches and features.
Then in a parametric modeller, if you have a part with list of 10 features and you modify or delete the 2nd feature in the list, all hell breaks loose with broken dependencies. Whereas in code, it's a lot easier to tie up all these loose ends when you make changes to the basic structure of the part.
Code is much easier to parametrize with constants, lends itself much better to version control and merging modifications from multiple designers.
So for all these reasons, even though it seems crazy to think that code would compare favorably to visual CAD design, I'm finding it works really well for me. Much better than I expected.
Super interesting, I've just started in a grad job working extensively with Solidworks . I can certainly see the advantage there coding wise, I suppose the only (real) downside is the steeper learning curve. Do you know of anything similar for Solidworks, google didn't show me anything upon a quick search. Thanks for your reply!
(replying to myself: I suppose the VBA macros would support a similar approach but not really in the same paradigm as OpenSCAD)
Great video, really in-depth and informative, but... That solder paste bit really made me cringe. You have to apply that stuff like you were screen printing it. Never put it directly on the holes of the stencil. Even less use that card or anything to push it through. What you do is put some on the top of the stencil and use the card as a squeegee and rake it over the openings *once* and then try to lift the stencil without moving it laterally. Also, when you are reworking bad solder joints a bit of flux will save you a lot of headache. HTH and cheers for the great videos!
You sir need more views!
Is there any common consumer gear where I might just find an fpga in the trash?
dont you need a local oscillator which signal is mixed with the input signal and then converted to baseband? and arent there two ADCs needed, one for the inphase and one for the quatrature signal?
maybe you could use your frequency synthesizer from your other video to create the IF?
Exactly... this is just the baseband part. Though even without any mixers, the ADC has enough bandwidth to cover much of the HF band as a DDS SDR.
I'll have to look at kicad, would it happen to have library support for the ICE40 fpga's? I'm interested in making my own board for the little beastie.
I believe it does have support. A lot of the FPGAs were added to the symbols library by scripts that parse the datasheet PDFs.
Damn, not using Dave Jones's open hardware icons, how am I supposed to know at a glance if the firmware of this board is available :)
Sorry it's not available. The firmware for those 37-wires is top secret. Contact my sales representative to sign our NDA, then we can talk about a volume licensing deal.
36:00 Is Pb the new Hg? Too much scare about a relatively harmless Element. Normally the pure metal doesn't do anything to your health (except it comes flying at a high speed or a bigger chunk of it falls of the workbench on to your toes). To get a high enough bioavailability, you need to have lead compounds (just like it is with Hg). These can be quite nasty and they can get created over time when Pb is ends up in our environment. These lead compounds may end up in the air/water or are then enriched in the food chain and we are at the top of the food chain. And because people are too lazy/ignorant/stupid to dispose or recycle their electronic waste in a environment friendly manner, the lead was banned in electronics.
best youtube electronics videos
Great video.
missleading video description, but some imortant content
I asume you will try to build an IQ Receiver so i wonder how you synchronise the two ADCs?
I think you can create a pad in pcbnew and set its net to GND so you don't have to have it in the schematics
Good tip. Thanks!
You can create auto-connected hidden pins for any net name you like (like VCC), and was customary during the days when 5V logic dominated. Nowadays it's regarded as a bad idea, because you now typically want to connect a component's ground and power pins to project-specific distinctly named ground and power nets.
Can you do more with SDR video’s?
Graham, still working with your amazing videos?
Can you build a TNC for radios?
Wow thanks so much! I always like your video's but this one is so long and full of info, incredible! Thanks! One question you always seem to advertise the Chinese sites as low cost but in the Netherlands all these products above 20$ will be picked out by customs and you have to pay clearing, tax and administrative costs... Is this not a problem in the UK? Thanks again!
I have not encountered that issue, no. The only issue is having to wait 4-6 weeks for delivery.
UK Customs is just verry lax. That's the reason why many express-Options like "Germany Express" at Gearbest are shipped to the UK in Containers, taken through customs and then transported via Trucks to the right EU-Country where they are given to a local post service.
OpenTechLab haha oke so it's one or the other then... Delivery to my doorstep is often very fast, even our customs is fast... Expensive though! Good luck moving back home. Keep up the good work!
p.s. Solder Paste lasts a lot longer if you put it in the fridge!
Great ambitious vid, has about 10 separate interesting topics, well done. I'm sure shorter videos covering a single topic will be great.
Yeah, some of these things need most definitely deserve dedicated videos! Sampling theory and CadQuery deserve focussed videos IMO.
OpenTechLab that is a low cost and capable SDR project, and the sigrok stuff is worth highlighting.
Give component search engine a go, they got a lot of footprints, symbols and 3d models for all kinds of parts
Awesome
Are the two a/d, d/a boards for IQ sampling?
Shh you'll spoil the surprise ;-)
With that viscosity solder paste the stencil really does nothing to help; as you see its all over the pads anyways. The stuff I generally use is really stiff, and you should keep it in the fridge to keep it nice and firm. Now, generally it's no problem though, the soldermask will make it go where it should unless there's much to much and generally, just doing a line of paste across the pads will be fine. And for doing the actual reflowing, a simple hot air station and a temp probe for the multimeter is perfectly sufficient for one off or a small number of boards. You really don't need to follow the temp profile to the letter either, just in the ballpark is fine.
China taobao website also have an cheap 10 bit ADC and DAC board
it really is a shame that this board and most other cheap fpga boards don't really expose a lot of the io capability, it would be really great to see some 0ohm jumpers to configure per bank io voltage and maybe do length matching of differential pairs, you wouldn't even have have them couple particular close wich might hinder single ended use, a couple unpopulated ldo footprints also wouldnt hurt, the lattice machxo2 and 3 breakout boards were quite nice in that regard
expecially for interfacing data converters high speed serial is one of the major advantages fpgas offer
I'm amazed you can reflow with a frying pan.
the ADC only 8bit . think 10bit or 12bit will be better
16 or 18 :)
@SignalPath channel has many useful informations about that.
Plans for a kicad tutorial
During the reflow it would have been cool if you could have done picture-in-picture of sigrok-meter whilst the main pic is the paste melting.... that would have been cool (well, hot actually).
Not really done much with CAD (it's part of why I'm watching this) But this takes me back the the early 90s... Open S CAD reminds me a bit of the POV-Ray language... and CAD query has hints of the code I used to write in C++ (it'd be Python if I did it now) for generating POV-Ray files. (Sorry, I don't think I've got a point, just an observation)
Damnit! I used to have "a million" of those 50 ohm coax terminators and I threw them away... "don't need any of this old 10BASE2 Ethernet connectors anymore". :(
IS THAT A BLOB OF COTTON WOOL ON YOUR MICROPHONE???!!!!
Really interesting, video, I'm not sure if I'll ever DO any of this stuff... but there's plenty of pointers to other stuff that should keep me amused for a good long time. Keep up The Great Work.
The solder paste was too wet. It flowed under the stainless steel mask.
Forgive if mentioned already, but having just watching one chap with very stiff paste, and yours,.. too thin by far. There must be a happy medium for use with stencils. I would say that flux is cheaper than the lead beads. ergo the quest for profit overtaking common sense.
BTW on Thingiverse, I found an SCAD based Parametric Project Box maker. Love it . Pick your dimesion, front and rear panels, name plate, vent holes, holes and windows for knobs and displays. Grrreat stuff. Regards
You can get 3d models for most Molex connectors on their Website, no need to model it yourself (other than just for fun :P)
In that case they can't be included in the kicad library due to the licensing. Also the Molex STEP file for the connector has excessively complex geometry. My model is a simplified representation.
OpenTechLab okay, good point. Maybe I am too pragmatic with this kind of stuff
Try Labcenter Proteus, so much easier to use than KiCAD
Hmm looks interesting... bit it's not open source. Where's the fun in that? ;-)
Even your description of how you investigated the board is interesting and useful. I love how you don't just go, "I googled around and got the data sheet". That doesn't help people.
you can buy some of boards from AliExpress they deliver world wide.
I also build list of interesting fpga low/med/high cost boards if you interested.
Alinx support only Chinese site, try to use translate in chrome, En site may miss a lot of products.
your stencil was not been flat to the pcb, that's why the nasty spread, next time press the stencil to the pcb and don't poor the paste in the holes but drag it to the holes
Scopy Mc-Scope Face lol thats what I call them scopes now!
Hi, I use same A/D D/A board and use Altera EP4CE6 board to capture in case anyone interested I could give you link.
Another meaning to frying your board lol
I know you only want to use OSS but fusion360 would blow your mind in terms of parametric modelling.
Oh I know. Incredible software. But I wouldn't want to have my designs tied into closed software unless I'm forced to. It won't take long before the current version goes obsolete, my license expires, the OS it runs on goes end of life, and I would lose access to my work. That's what happened to me when I previously used SolidWorks.
For me, the OSS thing is a fun little game I like to play. What's the most crazy/awesome challenge I can take on just with OSS? It's happened many times that I've seen an OSS application transition from inferior to passable to competitive to preferable. And it's fun for me to dig through the OSS treasure chest to see what's on offer, and then share the results!
Yep, I hear you, and understand but damn, it's like writing a program but graphically. So good yet also is also *very* buggy. :)
Anyone wanting to be inspired by what an FPGA can do, check out websdr.ewi.utwente.nl:8901/ This is a software defined radio implemented in a Spartan XC3S500E FPGA, sampling the whole spectrum from 0-30 MHz at the same time, and you can listen to any portion of it you want! There are three main IC's doing all the work - the Spartan FPGA, an LTC2216 A/D converter clocked at 77.76 MHz, and a gigabit Ethernet chip to allow the WebSDR software to work. Click on the "see here for background" link at the top of the page to see the evolution of this project. Truly amazing what the builder has accomplished here.
The documentation for Rev 1.0 of the AD/DA board (complete with schematic) can be found here:
goo.gl/aAgkxL
It's *NOT* Key-Cad, it's K eye Cad.
As a native english speaker you may think so. But keep in mind that the origin of KiCAD is in France and a lot of contributions come from CERN in Geneva in the French-speaking part of Switzerland.
And here you can hear how Wayne Stambaugh, the KiCad Project Lead Developer pronounces KiCAD:
ruclips.net/video/nL0yTvJKA5c/видео.html
That stencil was completely useless
Yeah. It looks particularly bad through the macro lens. I'll try more viscous solder paste next time.
I think the problem was that there was a gap between board and stencil, maybe because of that corner pieces which did elevate stencil.
This guy makes me feel like a bum
Easy ...
N=((1.0*In_Voltage)/4);
OV=(10.0*N);
Tell the simple folk what is FPGA
Oh god, I find discourse on of the worst forum software available
He barely touches the real sdr. He just makes the video long. At the end you learn nothing about sdr.
Nah, he makes really in-depth hardware analysis which is awesome.