Gertboard Assembly Thread

[ChrisMc]

I thought the Farnell kits did this as standard?

No such luck I am afraid

Seems a shame as I don't think anyone would mind the extra pence to have a few spare in the kit.

[N_A_B]

I managed to take the end off the 100uF capacitors when I was trying to tidy up the solder job

Yup. Did the same!

I'm pretty sure if someone started a kit, with two spare of all the surface mounted stuff on ebay, they might be popular.

Luckily, on a whim, I had bought a 'sample' book of all sorts of values of SMD resistors and capacitors from a Chinese ebay seller (search ebay for #smd sample'), so I could just hoik one out of there!

N.

[Wendo]

I got mine today, assembled the whole thing in about 2 hours and it's an amazingly tidy job considering I haven't soldered anything more than some wires in 20 years, and never any SMD.

I got right to the end, started inserting the IC's and noticde element14 sent me an extra MCP4802-E/P DAC and no MC74HC244AN's ... now I have to wait for them to get those to me to see if it works... *sigh*

[davej]

Post-assembly voltage question:

Assembled, but the voltages at the regulator are out of whack and I have therefor not installed the jumper to feed the board itself.

RPI 5V in : 4V8
RPI 3V3 in: 3V3

Regulator out : 4V3

Is this just a 'no load' issue, or have I gone and messed something up ?

Dave

Cautionary tale:

I had messed up. Unlike most of the SMD capacitors, C1 has some copper running between the two mounting pads, so if your assembly is slightly off you run the risk of bridging to the copper in the middle.

It is almost impossible to remove the regulator without damaging the pads (fortunately there is a breadboard area close by to mount the regulator in) so you want to be extra careful with this capacitor.

[Gert van Loo]

C1 has some copper running between the two mounting pads, so if your assembly is slightly off you run the risk of bridging to the copper in the middle.

That should not cause a short as the copper is covered with a solder mask.
Unless you damage the solder mask by scraping it with a metal object (e.g. a soldering iron)

[davej]

C1 has some copper running between the two mounting pads, so if your assembly is slightly off you run the risk of bridging to the copper in the middle.

That should not cause a short as the copper is covered with a solder mask.
Unless you damage the solder mask by scraping it with a metal object (e.g. a soldering iron)

That is possible. All I finally noticed was a bad solder job by me (too much solder and component off-center). Fortunately I have two soldering irons so I was able to use a chopstick approach to remove the capacitor.

Original question: Got an unexpected high voltage (4V3) on the headers where I was supposed to get 3V3 on the output side of the regulator.

What would have been the best debug approach ?

[alexeames]

Original question: Got an unexpected high voltage (4V3) on the headers where I was supposed to get 3V3 on the output side of the regulator.

What would have been the best debug approach ?

I mention this just in case. One or two people have had issues with the battery in their multimeter being a bit run down, which sometimes gives erroneous readings. Before assuming you've messed up, it might be worth checking that first. You never know. It could just be that.

[Eddie]

I didn't realise what I was taking on when I ordered the Gertboard and I was horrified to see the number of components, and the tiny size of some of them! I've had virtually no soldering experience so I started building the board with little hope of success. I used an Antex 18w iron and 0.8mmm solder, I dripped blobs of solder everywhere, misread the instructions, and lost a couple of the really tiny components, but eventually I got it finished and hooked it up to the Pi and checked the voltage - 3.25V - a little low, but I assume it's OK? I've downloaded the test software and compiled it, all I have to do now is to run it.

PS I've not attached a picture of the finished article as I'm not showing off my terrible soldering to anyone!

[alexeames]

Hope it all works Eddie. I was amazed and delighted when mine did

[JohnCrow]

Just finally finished building my Gertboard this morning.
(Prefer to work in natural daylight for projects like this).
Run the first tests sending pattens to the LED's. All works fine, so hopefully everything else should.
Thanks Gert its a great little board, going to enjoy experimenting with it. Espcially the AVR, microcontroller are one of my main interests.

[Yewberry]

This is just to thank everyone for the Gertboard - and indeed for the Pi itself.

I was terrified when I saw the size of the SMDs but I built the Gertboard from start to finish yesterday without any major problems - it took me about 4 hours and that is certainly more soldered joints than the total I've hitherto made in my 54 years

It all seems to work - I'm going through the test programs without a problem so far. It's enthused me immensely, though I'm not sure whether I shall head off into hardware or software yet.

There's something utterly benign and wonderful about all this Pi stuff, you know

[exartemarte]

There's something utterly benign and wonderful about all this Pi stuff, you know

Absolutely - it's practical, it's interesting and it's fun if you like that sort of thing, and it doesn't break the bank.

[paultnl]

"and it doesn't break the bank."

Can you tell my wife that please.