Hacking COMPLETED My dongle project, internal/external SAMD Loader with CR2032 Holder

[Canna]

Nice....Can i use a a battery like this? https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/lipo-battery-pack?variant=20429081991

Will it charge it via micro usb?

Yes you can use the battery as for charging i think your suppose to use this https://www.adafruit.com/product/1304, i would

Now if you or any one has questions for my build then pm as i dont wanna intrude on @electronrancher thread

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Also to clear things up if anyone is interested in @electronrancher Build or chip then contact him direct via pm, so its not listed .

 

[Yasars]

Thank you for your hard work ... I need and plug and play.solution... its read to use... Can wait.for.rls

@Canna i can send pm xan you send me an what i need? Thx

 

[ShadyGame]

How long will a CR2032 battery last?

 

[Canna]

How long will a CR2032 battery last?

You Can switch it off

 

[electronrancher]

Indeed. You only need to switch it on for a few seconds while you launch the payload, then you can switch it back off and put it away. A single battery should last for months if you don't forget and leave it on

 

[electronrancher]

Time to get back to the tech stuff! There was a discussion about reflow a ways back. Reflow is when a board is heated to melt the solder paste into solder and actually attach all the components.

I use a small reflow oven called a t962a. It works well now, but originally the temp sensors were really poorly calibrated. I don't wish the pain of doing that math on anyone - for y = mx + b where both m and b are wrong, find the appropriate scaling factor for two temp sensors that are averaged to give m. Ugh I'm not a math guy.

Long story short, once it's tuned you just pop your board in , close the door and run a cycle. 6 min later you've got a panel of widgets!

 

[electronrancher]

It's funny that the slowest part of this whole project is trying to figure out how to make a commit to github!

Source code coming soon..

 

[electronrancher]

Where can i buy and how much ? Nice work love to support this...

Blamo where you selling it at I want one

I too would be interested in one

Def want one. Hook it up! Please

Thanks a ton for your support, folks! Rest assured that I will offer the device here as soon as I am able. It is also available on tindie but my listing on the sales site here will be the official distribution channel.

I'm really excited about being able to offer a user-programmable and hackable loader for all the folks who don't want to sweat over a soldering iron messing with teensy little widgets!

And of course, I'm excited the damn thing worked first try!

More to come soon, folks - stay tuned!

 

[linuxares]

Oooh an oven!

 

[electronrancher]

Oooh an oven!

Lol, it's a legitimate part of the process! Too hot, crap burns. Too cold, or hot for too short a time - bad connections.

Y'all get to see the whole process here, there's a whole lot more boring stuff than exciting stuff, but sweating the details is what makes it work in the end.

 

[MatinatorX]

I should have bought one of those SWD programmers, I know exactly the ones you mean! I'll putter along with my little blue pill, secretly hoping it breaks so I can upgrade!

They looks nice, but they definitely lack some heart. I'd agree - stick with the one you made until it gives up the ghost!

And I'll tell you what - I don't have a 3D Printer and can't CAD to save my life. I'll send you a loader for free if you wouldn't mind printing up a little case for it. All I ask is that I get one, and it goes on Thingiverse.

That sounds good to me! Fusion360 is almost relaxing now after a long day at work. Making a dongle for your board just sounds like more fun. I'll put it up on Thingiverse and I'll also send you the .STEP file in case you ever want to edit it yourself (meshes like .STL are awful for this).

I have heard, from my non nerd friends, that some people don't want to look at a bare PCB. Can you imagine that? Who are these people?!?

Madness! Oh well, joke's on them - I made the PCB part of the case on my dongle. Mwahahaha!

 

[electronrancher]

They looks nice, but they definitely lack some heart. I'd agree - stick with the one you made until it gives up the ghost!

That sounds good to me! Fusion360 is almost relaxing now after a long day at work. Making a dongle for your board just sounds like more fun. I'll put it up on Thingiverse and I'll also send you the .STEP file in case you ever want to edit it yourself (meshes like .STL are awful for this).

Madness! Oh well, joke's on them - I made the PCB part of the case on my dongle. Mwahahaha!

Woah, STEP files? That's serious CAD business - you don't mess around! But yes, if you would be willing to take a whack at it that would be awesome! Let's talk over PM - I'll get your address and put one in the mail to you tomorrow.

 

[MatinatorX]

It's funny that the slowest part of this whole project is trying to figure out how to make a commit to github!

Source code coming soon..

I went through that myself the other day. They do good work, but I'll never understand software guys

This dongle is looking better and better, keep up the awesome work man! Make up a quick sketch if you have something in mind for the case and I'll get started. If you feel like sharing the EAGLE files I can make you a nice shiny board render too!

 

[electronrancher]

I went through that myself the other day. They do good work, but I'll never understand software guys

This dongle is looking better and better, keep up the awesome work man! Make up a quick sketch if you have something in mind for the case and I'll get started. If you feel like sharing the EAGLE files I can make you a nice shiny board render too!

Sounds great, I will sketch something up and pack up the eagle files. How on earth do you make a board render?

And your loader will be in the mail by this evening. I thought I could pack it up this morning but I underestimated all the other stuff going on here in the AM and I'm out the door right now

 

[electronrancher]

Merry Christmas to me! My new LDOs have arrived and the first set of 18 boards will (hopefully) be finished tonight.

More to come in a bit!

 

[MatinatorX]

Sounds great, I will sketch something up and pack up the eagle files. How on earth do you make a board render?

And your loader will be in the mail by this evening. I thought I could pack it up this morning but I underestimated all the other stuff going on here in the AM and I'm out the door right now

Thank you sir, no rush!

About board renders, since Autodesk bought Eagle a while ago, they've introduced integration with Fusion360. Within your library, you can now assign STEP files to components and place the models on a virtual board in the right place. Then, when your board is done, you can click the "Sync with Fusion360" button and pick a location in your 360 projects folders and it will spit out a 3D model of your board, with all the components in the right place using the STEP models you provided. I think you can use other file types but you'll want to stay away from meshes like STL.

If I want to do more than make an enclosure and feel the board is worthy of a pretty render, I'll then assign proper materials to all the components (STEP files only let you assign colors). For really fancy renders I'll convert my gerbers to SVG files and import and model them in Fusion360, since right now the syncing process only pushes a low resolution bitmap that doesn't show up in renders. I've attached an example of my board below showing what you get out of the normal process as well as what a render looks like without proper materials assigned and traces modeled.

It's a huge pain in the arse to make a dimensionally accurate 3D model for every component you have, but you only have to do it once and then it's in your library forever, and if you're trying to make the tightest fitting case possible there really is no better way.

 

[electronrancher]

Got about 9 boards built and tested, all good! Doing another 9 now.

Before I forget, I will post the firmwares here. UF2 format, just double click reset and drop the files onto the virtual flash drive that pops up (Drive name is FIRMWARE)

 

[electronrancher]

Woo! I figured out how to upload code back to Github! It was surprisingly easy actually, just never got around to looking it up even after all these years.


Source Code for the SAMD Loader firmware, forked from sam-fusee-launcher with minor mods for LED and behavior

https://github.com/electronrancher/sam-fusee-launcher

 

[electronrancher]

And here is the source code for the UF2 bootloader with updates to support the SAMD Loader board. Build with make BOARD=SAMDLoader. Of course, building requires gnu arm-none-eabi-gcc

https://github.com/electronrancher/uf2-samdx1

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Update: 8/8/18, 11:30. The first two panels of loaders are complete! Flashed, tested, all functions verified!

 

[designgears]

Is there somewhere to buy a little case to snap onto these?!