.:madworm:.'s photos

The WORST I've ever had. There is a sickening taste of vinegar.

The WORST I've ever had. There is a sickening taste of vinegar.

The BUB board only comes with one LED. The one I got wouldn't show both RX and TX activity, so I just bridged pins 22 and 23 to have the single LED react to both paths. The default setup is activity indicator for RX on 22 and TX on 23. A much smarter way would have been to use FT_PROG and just change the chip's EEPROM configuration, which allows RX/TX activity indication on a single pin. My lame excuse for using my soldering iron is that the software tool doesn't run on linux. I have XP in a VM, but soldering is more fun anyway.

The tube is green. Blue would've been much nicer.

x: 100ns/div -- y: 10mV/div

55.2V DC coming from the open loop boost converter. I still wonder how this can provide a stable voltage without any load attached. Theoretically the inductor should charge the capacitor more and more if it is constantly switched. Adafruit recommends to wait a few minutes after testing the step-up converter before going on with the build process. This can be sped up by bleeding the capacitor with your finger across its pins _after unplugging_ the power supply. Skin surface resistance is low enough to make that work. This shouldn't be considered "best practices", but here it is safe enough. Using a 10k resistor to 'short' the capacitor works as well. Don't do this if you're poking around inside something with real high voltages (e.g. old TV sets with several kV).

x: 5µs/div -- y: 10mV/div