Tag Archives: soldering

Soldering Frenzy!

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I found some time to solder some more of the group buy purchases which came in a couple months ago.  So far I soldered one Renard64XC and 8 SSRNeons.  They are similar to the SSRez, but with two neon lamps so you are made aware when 120VAC is present.

Picture of the first completed Renard64XC5 First Completed SSRNeon Completed SSRNeon

I was able to complete the Renard64XC in one evening in a couple of hours. Two nights later I was able to complete 8 of the SSRNeons in a few hours. I was able to test them briefly by using the Simple Renard Tester 8 channels at a time. I moved one SSR through each group as I tested dimming across all channels. There appear to be no problems with the Renard64XC, although I have yet to try a full sequence that will stress the current drawn and could find issues.

Progress

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Tuesday night I was able to get started on soldering the Renard boardsw are starting with. I have two 24 channel boards giving us 48 total channels for now. I hope to buy at least one 64 channel controller with a group purchase between now and Christmas 2011. For now, here are a couple of pictures of the start.

Started Soldering Renard SS24 Renard SS24 Close Up Renard SS24 Bottom

Since I’ve never soldered PCBs before, this was a new task. I already have a really nice soldering iron, but I bought a fine point tip, and some fine solder for this work. I actually found it much easier than I thought it would be. The fine tip, and accurate temperature control made it relatively easy. For now, I don’t have a PCB holder, so I would either put the board on my lap, my work bench, or clamp it with the alligator type clamps depending on where I was working on the board.

In about 3 hours I have all resistors, diodes, LEDs, caps, fuse holders, and IC sockets soldered to the board. I think all I have left are the triacs, RJ45, DB9 connectors, and the screw terminals. I should be able to complete those with another hour of work, then I can start tinkering with the software side of things. I will need to program the PIC microcontrollers, get some “tests” going with Vixen on a windows machine. Then I will start looking at the rs485 protocol and my own software to sequence/control the show. I don’t like the fact that vixen requires windows and hope I can easily “record” the output and convert to something I can plop into eeprom on an arduino or similar MCU.

For now, I’m just excited to actually have hardware ready to play with. I will probably get a little “test” setup in the garage so I can visually see lights blinking and flashing. I spend a lot of time reading, learning, etc. on DIYC where I heard this gem: “It’s not a hobby. It’s an obsession. It is only a hobby for 6 months.” We’ll see if we make it past the hobby stage, stay tuned!