Assembling The Boards

Originally I meant to contract out board assembly to some technicians on craigslist but I think I want greater control over even this stage of the process at least for the prototype(s).

So in keeping with the age old adage "if you want something done well, do it yourself" I have assembled the tools Ill need.

Soldering SMD parts almost always requires either a reflow oven or a hot plate. There is a $300 electronic reflow oven on ebay. Chinese made, works and doesnt take up too much space. However on youtube and on reddit various individuals have expressed more success using hotplates to reflow solder. Some even use electric skillets and an infrared temperature monitor

I purchased a $100 electronic hotplate on Ebay (YADGONG 946C from a seller in California with two) with enough surface area to handle an 8x8 sized board. Mine is 7.6 x 5.4. I also bought an IR temperature sensor for around $12 ... shipping included for both

Of course I might have need to do rework and I definitely need to hand solder some through hole parts on the board. With that in mind I bought the 2 in 1 SRS 852D+ reflow soldering station. This cost me about $61 on Ebay shipping included

Finally and possibly the most important tool on an Engineer/Inventors lab (outside of a digital multimeter) is an analog scope. My favorite Engineer vlogger Dave Johnson (eevblog on youtube) recommends ditching the fancy usb/pc scopes and getting a nice dual channel analog oscilloscope for starters. So I bought this Tektronix 464 100Mhz Dual Channel scope on Ebay for about $129 with $30 shipping from Rochester, NY.

Various other small tools like hand pump to lift and place SMT, soldering tools and tweezers, rework wire, solder paste, solder flux and enough parts to make a prototype and perhaps an initial run of 10 has been purchased on Ebay, CircuitSpecialists and Mouser


Once the solder paste and boards arrive I am good to go.

Message from Board Fabrication Plant ... boards are done and shipped

Pictures attached ... should be here in about a week and a half. cant wait. Btw
I am currently reading "Makers: The Next Industrial Revolution" by Chris Anderson.

I also got a stencil made since I plan on assembling/soldering this board at home. I bought a Hotplate and rework/soldering station last week on ebay in anticipation

project EGWU complete !!!

Its been a year ... a whole year since I set about designing this board. At lot has happened distractions wize some enormously stressful none of which I am comfortable going into on here.

But I  have finally completed the layout. Actually I finished the layout about a month ago but had been touching up and correcting problems since. Even this week - after submitting the gerber files to the Chinese PCB Fab plant (from Ebay) that will be doing the boards  ... I still had to revise it two more times (the plots not the layout) to satisfy them.

I am off the whole thanksgiving week and I am looking for a much needed "staycation". Ill also use the opportunity to start on the firmware. It will be another two and a half to three weeks before I see the 5 boards I ordered


Sillkscreen layer below

IAR kickstart dev kit for the LPC1788

Long story short I am working on my first commercial product and the lpc17xx series of cortex-m3 processors fits the bill.  Picked up this lpc1788 system on ebay for a whopping $47 + $16 = $63 verses the 399.99 it used to cost new. Board appears to power up - comes with JLINK lite for debugging ... Heres a breakdown and pics

LPC1788-SK evaluation board Microcontroller LPC1788FBD208 LQFP User interfaces 2x user buttons LCD 3.5’’ 320x200 24bit color TFT with backlight and touch screen Debug interfaces JTAG/SWD connector - 20 pin 0.1’’ SWD connector - small 9 pin 0.05’’ ETMv3 connector - small 19 pin 0.05’’ Communication interfaces RS232/ICSP USB host and OTG CAN driver and connector IrDA 100 Mbit Ethernet 12C routed to connector UXT connector EXT connector QEI connector Power functions Multiple power supply options: - J-Link (pin 19) - Trace connector (pin 11&13) - External supply Power supply LED Additional features Audio in and out SD/MMC card connector Trimpot Accelerometer Schematic for download (PDF) J-Link Lite for ARM J-Link Lite for ARM is a small JTAG/SWD hardware debug probe; it connects via USB to the PC host running Windows.