Soldering Station and Protoboard Power 4

Now that everything is made and assembled, and that the pictures are uploaded, I'll now go about it.

I got the PCBs first, but I set them aside since I didn't have any of the parts from Mouser. I think I tried to do the soundcard switchboard first and then switched to this, but I can't remember at the moment.

I got the plates back from Xometry and their bead blast finish wasn't really what I was expecting - I kinda wished I didn't spend an extra 3 USD for it.

Hard to tell the coarseness of the sandblast, but I tried doing what I could with my phone.

I took them to work to beadblast myself and once I figured out how to get the booth set up, I ended up with a much nicer finish, though with a bit of scarring from Xometry's bead blasting.

Again, did what I could with my phone.

Once I received the parts, I began assembling the PCB. I apologise ahead of time that I literally took a picture after soldering each item.

The usual 3-up, top, and bottom pictures taken of the main board.

The usual 3-up, top, and bottom pictures taken of the fan and light board.

I started with the main board, since I wanted to get past the static and/or moisture-sensitive components first (the SMT LEDs that I ordered are moisture-senstive). I first started with the red and green SMT LEDs since those were going to a bit more difficult to position than the red SMT LEDs.

3-up of the red/green SMT LED soldered, single-board view, and somewhat close-up view.

Next was the red SMT LEDs (again, moisture sensitivity).

3-up of the red SMT LEDs soldered, single-board view, and somewhat close-up view.

After I put the other two boards away, I soldered the remaining static-sensitive component, the SOT--23 dual-diode device (BAT54CLT1G).

I used a couple of the fan/light boards to prop the board so that I wouldn't put pressure directly on the SMT LEDs.

Next was the SMT resistors for the LEDs.

Again, using the fan/light boards to avoid pressure to the SOT-23 diodes.

Next was the fuse indicator relays (G6L-1P-DC12).

Made it somewhat neat, though it's not going to be readily visible.

Now to focus on the main components, starting with the shortest component, the SMT fuses.

Blank blue ones are 2A fuses (hence the "2" next to them), and the ones with the "M" on them are 4A fuses (hence the "4").

Next in height was the Hirose headers for the blowers and the output to the breadboard.

Nothing really striking to note here.

And then the Hirose header for the output to the fan/light board, which was a bit surprising to me that it was shorter than the Molex header for the input.

Big, but not as big as some of the other components.

The Molex input header was next.

Flange thing to prevent someone plugging in a 24-position ATX connector directly to the board, though someone could plug in a 20-position ATX connector, though it'd probably be obvious since the header is 22-position. I think the clip cutout might prevent the 20-position ATX connector from being plugged in.. I've not checked.

Last on this side is the relays, which were much larger than I thought they were.

Relays kinda dwarf the rest of the components.

Last item to be soldered were the switches, which were a bit tricky to get the bushing parallel to the Z axis, but I ended up doing a partial assembly to get them lined up with their respective holes just enough.

I left the standoffs attached since I was going to be needing them soon.

I realised that the anti-torque washer and the internal tooth lock washer weren'tt going to fit because I only calculated for the widest point that the nuts can take up. While it wasn't a big deal, it was definitely an "oops" moment.

I pushed the light pipes into the panel, which was a bit tougher than I was used to, since the ones at work are a lot easier (probably the holes in those panels are probably bigger than the manufacturer recommends). While I felt like it would be pointless to use the retention rings, I installed them anyway. I used some blue Loctite for the bottom nut and finalised the board install to the panel.

I think I had the "Main power" label on the panel before I started working with the board.

Next was to finish the board with the switch labels.

Not professional-looking, but decently discernable what each switch does.

A couple quick shots between the board and the panel.

I set the assembly aside in a anti-static bag and began with the fan/light board, starting with the short Hirose headers for the lights.

A lot of spots for the fan headers, but just wait.

Next was the fan headers, and I did the corner ones first before utilising another fan/light board to help keep the other 26 of them in place.

Yep... Wow.

Last is the other Hirose connector.

Meh. Seriously, meh.

And now I needed to work on the cable between the main board and the fan/light board. I had worked a bit of it at work from some cable scraps, so I essentially just had to crimp the connectors on and load the plugs correctly.

Connectors crimped, plug loaded, both ends.

I then covered the individual cables with heatshrink and then shrank the heatshrink.

Before and after.

And then I covered the somewhat ugly cable ends with another tube of heatshrink.

Before and both ends after srhinking.

Next was to make the harness, which would be a lot easier, since I wouldn't have to deal with the fairly stiff cable of the fan/light cable. I crimped and loaded the mating receptacles for PCIe, EPS, and ATX 24.

EPS, ATX 24, and PCIe portions.

I then loaded the harness plug.

Loaded, or so I thought...

Now it was time to hook everything up and give it a go.

Harness plugged into the board; unit attached to the PSU with cable and fan/light board; fan attached, fan and PSU oriented.

I hit the power switch on the PSU and the light didn't come on, after a minute of trying to figure out what was wrong, I shut it off and looked at everything - there was also a slight smell, but I'll get to that in a bit. If you go back to the previous post, and take a good look at the pictures here, you'll see what I did... Which was flopping the wire order in the harness plug around.

In this orientation, the 12 volt wires (yellow) are supposed to be at the bottom of the plug.

Luckily I had the Molex deplugging tool, so fixing the problem was fairly quick and easy.

Harness now in the proper order.

And then I set everything back up and attempted the test again.

Second attempt.

Tried it again, and no dice. I took the broken-ish multimeter I had (the one in one of the other pictures) to measure the voltage output for PS-ON and +5VSB, which both gave no readings, the PSU died from whatever shorted. I luckily had another PSU around though it was a 20-position ATX and not a 24-position. With how the harness is made, it doesn't really matter that much.

Setup, oriented, PSU switch on, power switch on, fan switch on, blower and light switches on. I also had another picture with the blower and light switches n the down position, but I accidentally deleted them from my phone since I couldn't tell what it was.

Third time was a charm and I was just as excited as Frankenstein when his monster came alive. Now it was time to set up the unit at the solder station.

Overall view, and close up of the fan/light board.

The fan/light board is in a temporary location, and I'll eventually make something so it's not dangling there. I have actually put a spacer between the board and the fan so the screw is straighter, and have spliced a fan connector to the fan, but I didn't take pictures because I forgot. Anyway, I decided to have a bit of fun before I went to bed.

White fans connected to fan/light board, light and blue fan connected to other power supply via breadboard.

At some point I got the Engineer Inc. PA-20 crimper and was able to properly crimp the tiny Hirose connectors, and I did the connectors for the blowers and lights.

Wires stripped for crimping, crimped connectors, loaded plug.

If I remember, I'll take some more pictures. After getting my Iwiss ratcheting crimper, I decided to test it on the cable for the breadboard power, and after tinning the wires, I decided to dress the panel a bit with a OSH Park sticker that I received with the second version of the soundcard switchboard (more on this in the respective post).

Now it's not as plain.

The Iwiss crimper worked a lot better than the Engineer Inc. crimper, and I loaded the breadboard power strips accordingly, though I had to substitute yellow for green (12V).

I'll eventually clean the breadboard...

The station is complete (at the cost of a PSU), and I'll eventually take some pictures of everything. I would've been a bit more careful and double-checked the harness, but I was short on time.

Eventually I'll remember to switch the switch on the PSU on before switching the power switch, but it might take a bit of time (it also doesn't help that the switch is under the power cord).

As expensive as this project was, it was definitely worth it. Eventually I'll add more fans and give myself a larger space to work, but it is what it is for now.

Theme Update 2

I guess the two lines added was for one thing and Nanfenkoff gave me something that fixed the other break.

Anyway, yay 2.1.1-2! I've lost too much cognition to write and stuff... Ciao!

Theme Update

A friend of mine on ACDB noticed that the theme breaks on smaller screens and gave some CSS to help fix that. Sadly I think only one of the two fixes work, but a great help to me, since I'm pretty clueless with CSS. Thank you Nanfenkoff.

Since the change isn't obvious, I've tacked on a "-1" to the end of the version. There might be a "-2" coming, but I can't say. XP

Also, I've quite a bit to write about with project and machine updates, but I'm not entirely in the mood to work on them at the moment. Until then, ciao!

Reasons to Use Manjaro Linux

The article I read is: 7 Reason Why I Use Manjaro Linux And You Should Too

I was surprised to see an article about Manjaro in my news feed, and decided to humour the author a bit by skimming the article. There's a few things I'll pick up from it, but I think I've already exhausted the reasons why I use Manjaro enough times already.

While I've never tried installing Arch itself, I have tried Gentoo, and from what I know of installing Arch and installing Gentoo, I'm decently certain that installing Arch is faster and/or easier than Gentoo (remember that I gave up on installing Gentoo on the G5 after about 8 hours).

I've never really had any hardware issues in Manjaro, and the only Broadcom chip that I have that would cause an issue are the AirPort Extreme chips in Sae-chan and Taiga. Sure there's the Sound Blaster Z card in Melty, but meh. Not much else to say here.

PPAs... Ah, the bloody lovely world of PPAs... I remember adding a few when I was still using Linux Mint, and I think also when I briefly used Ubuntu. I do agree that it's not bad, but when you have a pile of them to add, it becomes fairly annoying. AUR is definitely a better "system", but if and only if the package gets maintained and not orphaned.

The rolling release is the main reason why I switched to Manjaro... From what I remember reading about it when I was trying to find something to replace openSUSE with, Manjaro described itself as somewhere between cutting and bleeding edge. As the article says, it's the newest stuff without breaking your system. I've not run into any major problems yet that required either a lot of work or just a clean install. Honestly the only problem I had so far was some gstreamer0.10 packages that came from somewhere and had to be compiled from AUR, which eventually broke my sound, but was fixed by removing the packages.

Switching kernels is usually not a huge priority for me, as I can usually run the latest stable kernel (the ones that don't say "experimental"), and have the kernel before it as a backup if something does happen to break (which hasn't so far).

I've not delved into the Manjaro community... Well, any communities in that matter. I've only delved into part of the Ubuntu and openSUSE communities once each to get an answer I wasn't able to find otherwise. In terms of Manjaro, I've found most of the answers I need on the Arch wiki to figure out things I'm trying to do or trying to find more about.

With friends that ask me where to start them on their Linux journey, I always point to Ubuntu and Linux Mint because of their large base and that both are the stereotypical distros to begin with. If they're looking for something a bit beyond that, that's probably when I would recommend openSUSE and Manjaro, as both serve me well (given that Tumbleweed on the Banana Pi could be better).

ASUS Tinker Board

The article I read is: ASUS' Raspberry Pi rival can play 4K video.

I was initially quite interested, but it faded away as I saw the price. While it's nice that it's a pretty good step above the Raspberry Pi 3, the fact that it's just about the same price as the Banana Pi M1+ is a bit of a deterrent for me. I like that it has gigabit ethernet (and its specs), but I don't like that it doesn't have a SATA port or USB 3.0 (I would've been more likely to buy one if it at least had the latter). Though, in technicality, I don't have to connect a storage unit to it to have a local (in terms of the machine) copy of my music library, and I could just mount the file server and utilise the copy on it, but that doesn't entirely sit well with me.

From what it seems like, it is the same size and hole pattern as the Raspberry Pi, so it essentially could be a drop-in upgrade, though there's probably only the standard distro for it at the moment (unlike the numerous distros available for the Raspberry Pi).

Looks like something that can do well, but I don't think it's for me.