Tuesday, April 15 2014
Ordered miscellaneous parts from Digikey, mostly resistors and through-hole headers. It all added up to $300, but I am ordering parts in bulk now; resistors are now always on reels of a thousand. The order shipped the same day.
I placed the order for the BlinkMtr01 board. I ordered only 5 boards since this will be just an intermediate step. Each board was $14.20, 5 day turn, 3 day shipping (USPS). I expect the boards to arrive on Friday Apr 25.
Ordered the solder paste stencil from OHaraRP, $28.62.
Total cost of the BlinkMtr01 board: $420.
I did some research on 0.10" headers, which are surprisingly expensive:
Digikey components (Prices as of 4/9/2014)
40x2 0.10" headers $52.46 for 100
40x2 0.10" breakaway headers $81.62 for 100
1x2 0.10" headers" $27.53 for 250
3x1 0.10" headers $4.62 for 50
1x2 0.10" jumper with grip $24.01 for 100
1x2 0.10" jumper with grip (red) $24.01 for 100
ChipQuik solder paste
Monday April 28 2014
I am finally back to the BlinkMtr01 project. The parts have arrived from Digikey and I need to load some new components into the EZ430 project. The first step is to identify which components are new.
Before doing anything else, I need to update my inventory spreadsheet (which really needs to be replaced with a database and interactive web page) with the new components. This takes about half an hour.
I open the DipTrace schematic and refresh the BOM by deleting the table and recreating it.
Open the BlinkyBOM.xlsx spreadsheet to the Parts sheet. I need to assign feeders to any components that have not already been assigned. I need to fire up the PnP machine so I can have the BlinkMtr project open. For this step I will open a remote session from my desktop.
This is a new project, so I need to import the PnP file from DipTrace using UCAD. Leave the Feeder ID blank for any components that are not already loaded.
Once the new project has been created, exit UCAD and start AutoTronik. Select the new project ("BlinkMtr01") and start working through the Setup menu items, starting from the top: Learn PCB, Learn Reference Points,