@@lawrenceharris7717 Yup, designing a small 3D printed jig for a few pogo pins are even just some Dupont male connectors would be done in 5 minutes. Just something that precisely fits over the board and pushes three pins down on the board with bit of weight on the back of the jig,, hell just use a paper weight.
To quote Henry Ford "If you want to find a better way to do a job, give it to a lazy man" so in the spirit of no effort November I suggest cutting down a strip of plastic from a credit card just wide enough to span the 3 pads. Then super glue the wires to the card so that the exposed wires extend past the end of the card. Bend the wires over the edge of the card so the side of the wires will contact the pads.
From years of DIY electronics, one thing I've learned: - if you have to do it once, leave it stupid - if you even THINK that you'd have to do it more than once, make it good, usable, painless and easy For exactly the reasons you've stated - yes, it might take only 40 minutes, once. But when you do it 10 times, that's almost a whole workday. Spent doing nothing.
Yeah haha. It's almost funny how trivial the fix is (you don't even need a PCB for the pogo pins - just glue them in!). And the board is a rectangle, it would take about two minutes to do the CAD.
You might want to consider Tag-connect for new designs. It's a footprint you can add to the circuit board, and you can then by a matching cable from them for programming. A good compromise between holding pins by hand, and designing your own board.
Tag-connect ;) The cool thing is that it's just a footprint, no component needed so really a zero-effort, zero-soldering, zero-time, pretty much zero-cost solution, especially given that this footprint is present in most EDA softwares. (I said "pretty much 0 cost" because you have to buy the connector which isn't especially cheap for what it is, but it's a one-off : there's 0 cost associated with each PCB you create). The connector then just "clips" on this footprint, and there you go, free hands ;) c.f Phil's Lab channel (really really good channel when it comes to electronic design), he's using this in pretty much all his boards.
TAG CONNECT EVERYWHERE! Costs nothing, small, easy to use...can't beat it. I've even taken to throwing it on first-run prototypes where I just want to break out an I2C or SPI bus to test pads just because it's there instead of a 0.1" header or JST connector because those boards are never going to leave the bench.
The Tag Connector for the Atmel ICE is reversed. If you're going to go this route, MAKE SURE!!! you get the LEMTA (Atmel backwards) variant of the connector. The header on the connector will then be in the correct orientation for you white Atmel ICE you have there on your desk. It's a great solution, though the connector is a little pricey. Over a few boards/design, the cost of not putting a header on your PCB more than makes up for the up front cost of buying the connector.
No-Effort improvement: 1) Put three properly spaced holes in the middle of a sturdy piece of cardboard like a playing card 2) Stick the wires through so they point out a little bit 3) Fold over the cardboard where the holes are so you can press the card together to hold them in place Tada. You freed up your other hand. :) Should also be less finnicky
Unironically, this is the most relatable video I’ve ever watched. Next time I’m holding down the boot wires praying that I will finally be able to press the mouse button with telekinesis and inevitably cursing my past self, I will know that I am not suffering alone.
Pogo pins! Mill-Max has a huge variety. If you set those pads up with the standard 0.1” spacing, you can just use a scrap of protoboard to hold the pins. The next step would be to add a base plate and Destaco toggle clamp to put pressure on the board/pins.
embedded electronics engineer here what you want is called a (custom) programming fixture - the cheap way is to buy some wide pitched male connectors, split them apart + put them in some "mold" that lines up with the programming pins on the ava + wire the appropriate SWD, SCLK, GND, PWR pins to the male connectors (use dupont male to female ribbon cables - or ditch the male connectors and just use male to male dupont connectors). i.e sam ice -> dupont connectors -> glued in a mold -> male connectors exposed on the "bottom" side of the mold make something to align the mold w/ the ava boards and use gravity to set the male connector onto the ava programming pads - a 3d printed box would work, and the easy thing is to make the mold the a tad wider in each dimension as the ava board but with a riser the length of the aforementioned connectors such that the connectors touch pretty well onto the ava board your issue is going to be making sure of signal integrity with the sam ice to the other end of the male connectors, the clock line has to as close to the same length as SWD (single wire debug) fyi there are services that can put firmware onto a reel of ICs and repackage them for you to use - im not sure on volume/availablity, we do this inhouse at my work
And they're droopy (unlike helping hands that you might mistake them for) which keeps pressure on the pin to hold it in place perfectly. They're awesome
I suppose you could 3D print a small jig that would hold Ava and then clamp down onto the correct pads with pogo pins. That might need like a tiny custom PCB to mount the pogo pins to, but I bet you could knock that design out in a couple hours, and it might generalize to use with future boards.
Hi Joe, I had exactly the same problem to solve, except that I had to do the initial programming (of a PIC32MM microcontroller) for a lot of boards. I soldered a strip of pogo pins onto a circuit board, soldered on cables and hot glued the whole thing into a small tray. I scripted the tray with OpenScad to fit the board and printed it with a 3D printer. The programming process now only takes seconds: Press the board into the tray onto the pins with one hand and start programming with the other hand. Done.
I think PCBite got already mentioned but for any future iteration get yourself a tag-connect cable and use the footprint. Thats the industry standard for when you don't want a connector on the board but need some guided pogo pin insertion or semi permanent connection This is the PN you most likely want for least board space and most compatability (like for ATMEL-ICE): TC2030-CTX-NL 6-Pin “No Legs”
There's a little clamp thing you can buy from ads fruit called a soc bite connector. It's meant to clamp around specific qfn chips but it can also grab the edge of a board. They're great for doing this
I love this, I'm a (fairly) low volume pcb design engineer and have done things like this many times. Others have suggested it but I'll reiterate it: popo pins with a 3d printed jig would significantly improve this. I recommend adding some vias to those pads to assist with positioning. How you're currently doing it would also be made easier if you replaced the pads with through-holes that you leverage the pins against during the bootload. They also make QFN breakouts you can place the chips in and bootload before even putting them on the board. On that topic, in my experience, most low-volute assembly houses will place any component you provide them and very often they don't even need to be on reels. If you purchase bulk of those bespoke chips, services like Advanced Assembly or Sierra Circuits will place them without hassle.
1) Get cheap USB mouse (or AVR with V-USB) and foot pedal - boom, one hand free! 2) Make 3D printed guide for your pogo pins, so they will always easily align over that microSD slot. 3) If you are ordering new boards, can't you make pins through hole? We used point 2 and 3 in previous work. Pogo pins self align in holes of PCB and we had pogo pins epoxied on board cover, so you just inserted board in cover (got aligned by mounting holes) and pressed BURN. Worked perfectly :)
As others have mentioned - TAGconnect is really cool, a bit expensive, but you only need one cable. Also gives you an option to use SWD/JTAG directly during development, instead of bootloaders, which is very likely faster and more convenient. And on top of that you can do debugging (Ozone, VSCode, etc), access any memory/registers contents and output logs via RTT.
solid core 22ga wire, 2 popsicle sticks, epoxy. -run the wires down the length of one popsicle stick, epoxy in place, use the second popsicle stick to make a popsicle stick wire sandwich. -leave enough wire at the output to cut, strip, and bend to the required spacing for the bootloader. -leave enough wire at the input to solder a connector that can be easily connected to the hardware that burs the bootloader -add more epoxy to the output end to lock the wires in place once the spacing is correct single hand boot loading from parts we've already seen in your videos.
Should look in to “flying line” “flying lead” “fly-by-wire electronics debug boards. Adjustable spring loaded pins and used for things like memory recovery so should be reliable enough for this. Cheap to get from the usual import sources.
You need to check out tag-connect connectors. They are basically connectors that clip onto a PCB and have pogo pins, so the pogo pins create the electrical connection for however many pins you need, and they clip onto the board through a couple of small holes so you don’t even need to hold onto it. Some connectors don’t have clips, so you’d need to hold onto them but it would reduce the number of holes you need cut in the PCB, as they just have a few holes to make sure the connector can’t be oriented incorrectly. My friend who was the electrical lead for his formula SAE team learned about them while he was designing boards for his formula car and recently turned me onto them. It would probably require a redesign of your board currently, but it’s worth keeping in mind for your next board. Also, you could probably design a super small board that you can solder pogo pins onto in order to basically be able to accomplish this super easily.
Couple of things you can do to make your life easier: 1) find a different assembler, most do accept a mix of their supply and your supply of parts. I recall pcbway having no issues with it. 2) digikey do preprogramming of chips so you can buy them, send them your files and they will program the whole reel for you. Not free but it can save you a headace
Got on here to say just that- pogo pins on a board that “mates” to your original boards mounting holes temporarily (that takes care of alignment of the pogo pins.)
Had a similar problem with one of my ATMEGA328p designs, the solution was to simply get a 3*2 ICSP header exclusively for burning the bootloader, it's worth the few cents and maybe 15mins of extra design time + most PCBA places will be happy to solder that on for you!
few ways to do it less painfully, use a 1x3 2.54mm header footprint unstuffed, easy to just shove the ends of the wires into the holes, or solder wires to a header to stick in there temporarily use a tag connect footprint (might be the thing with the claws mentioned) - the cables a bit pricey tho the piggyback probably only needs fab, no assembly, just hand solder the pogo pins in, and break them out to big 2.54mm pitch headers you could probably solder to the pads using 32 gauge (preferably enameled) wires - i work on similarly pitched / sized pads, and this works for me but definitely hard to really do anything after the fact, and not too big of a deal to do it by hand once every 2 years
You can use pogo-pins which are spring-loaded pins to probe those exposed pads. You can also design a 3D-printed holder with the same dimensions as the board to hold the entire board in place. The 3D printed holder can have holes that you can mount the pogo pins in place. This solution allows you to just plop the board into the holder while the pogo-pins contact and apply pressure to the pads, and you can have a hands-off bootloader flashing process.
Thats all right, there were boards I used to troubleshoot that had a blown fuse. I'd replace the fuse and if it blew again I'd put a jumper across it. When I'd turn it on again the top of the bad chip would blow off and ping iff the back of my work bench. Replace the chip, test, replace the fuse and done!
Spiritually no effort November smooth brain idea: take tape, tape it on the PCB, mark where the dots on the PCB are on the tape on the non sticky side, then just tape the wires on the sticky side with the right spacing that you know from taping them down. Idk just an idea.
Skip the "model another different thing in another piece of software", you already have what you need! Print the board on paper at 1:1 scale, glue the printout to a piece of wood drill through the pads, stick pogo pins into it (or just thicker wires maybe?), glue them in place Extra credit if you take 2 minutes on the saw to cut the wood to size, and then nail "walls" to two sides to make an alignment jig!
I'm struggling to find it, but a creator I watched solved this using a 3d printed jig. the center had a screw (yes with ridges) that would go through a screw hole in the PCB, and pogo pins around it centrally. The pogo pins would provide torque, which would cause a plastic backstop to rest against the PCB, pivoting around the screw, since the ridges would 'grip' the hole. It worked SO well, that I'm surprised it didn't take off elsewhere. I just wish I could remember who it was to give credit. It also had a non pogo pin for alignment only, that was larger then the rest.
For small runs, I like to 3d print a "tray" for the board with holes for pogo pins. I solder wires to the pogo pins then super glue them into the holes in the print.
Use a Spider Board. When microSD card go bad and they want to retrieve the data, they can "sand" the back side and attach needle like thingys to contact some pads with enough pressure to read from the card. This could be a solution
Is there any reason you can't add a header for programming? That would be my go-to. But without changing the Ava board, I'd glue together some pogo-pins in the right spacing and use that for one-handed operation. Hell, you could even use blue tape.
I feel seen. This is how my keyboard works too. My recommendation is a piece of cardboard that you can press the wires through (just to hold them), then wrap the exposed wires across the edge of the cardboard (so you can see where you’re putting them). Hopefully that’s a 5min job to build. But also, yeah, this is the dumb stuff we all do. Sometimes it’s not worth the time to fix. Please keep sharing.
3d print a jig that fits your PCB with holes in it that line up with your pads. Put pogo pins through the holes. Push the PCB onto the jig, hit program, job done.
Some assembly houses let you send them components in small quantities. At work we have some important components in stock because they can be hard to get and we just send them to the assembler. And I'm talking small quantities, we often order only ~5 PCBs because they're only for internal use and we don't need that many.
Maybe making a simple 3D printed clip that holds the wires in alignment could help? The alignment clip could then be clamped in your desk's mini clamp that could then hold the 3d printed clip in place, applying a little pressure from the wires to the board. That would free up a hand and yourself to walk away while the code was being uploaded and free up time for you to do other more productive things instead of having to hold steady like a surgeon for 45 minutes. I think the two halves of the wire alignment clip could be designed and printed in roughly 30 minutes then superglued together, so that would give a much better time ROI than having to design and manufacture a new piggy back board.
Easiest way is to take the male headers for 1mm type since that is what it looks like you did for spacing, solder to them, then touch that instead. Making a pogo pin PCB also works. Worst case scenario you can get sp10 probe helping hands. Its basically probes built into the helping hands where you can connect the wire to the probe for the programming
I normally just 3D print a jig. On that jig I have a way to permanently attach a little homemade perfboard pin to pogo pin adapter, and a way to temporarily clip the target board. Typically, that’s just some alignment posts and a couple of binder clips with kapton tape on them!
Pogo pins and coming up with a suitable plate to brace them (3d printed?) is the way to go, bunch of fly leads off the pins going to a bespoke breakout board. Jobs done
simple: if the flashing takes more than 10 seconds i would simply solder the wires and desolder them after uploading. if shorter: space the 3 wires correctly and use hotglue or sugru to keep that spacing. adding short springs or pogo pins and gluing them for correct spacing is also an option, obviously try to place the glue as close as possible to the copper that makes the electrical connection. still hacky but should free one hand
Use a foot pedal to make the selection on the screen. :) Love your videos. They always give me that little (sometimes big) nudge to get back to work on my own project. Which, by the way, is a totally unique type of desktop 3D printer.
Hah -- have def done this before. Nowadays I use the Tag-Connect TC2030-NL footprints (super compact) on all of the ST32-based boards I design -- but they also make specific cables for various Atmel, Microchip, and other archs (or you can just do it yourself using their connector). They typically have two footprint types: Regular and NL (No Legs). The NL version just has registration pins, and it comes with a tiny PCB to allow you to put under the board if you need to do extended debugging/multiple programmings (can be kinda fiddley... I need to buy the regular version at some point...). For more extensive debugging, on some boards, I will also design my own edge connector that can be used with a 3D-printed fixture + pogo pins (some of the audio boards I've designed have this so that I can read out and calibrate the various voltage references without having to probe tiny points). Although for the small boards you typically use, may not have enough room for that.
I do 3D printed jigs for small scale test runs for PCBs. You take your Test pad pattern, 3D print that pattern with holes instead of Pads where you can shove pogo pins into to make your "Piggy Back board". Then just hand solder your wire to the pins and that is usually good enough.
They have standardized pogo pin clip layouts for this that you can just get cables for. For one time fifty bucks you have yourself a TC2030 cable, design six test pads and three holes into whatever fcu comes after AVA, and you have the same result.
If you use the correct spacing you can just break off SIP-connectors, solder wires to those and hold those against the board. Having plated drillholes obviously helps with alignement, but either way now you just need one hand for three wires. Generous estimate for time spend making this ”tool” is less than two minutes, assuming you already have the wires, source of SIP connectors, and a hot soldering iron. If balancing the cables cost you 20 seconds extra this pays off after flashing four boards.
I know someone who did this using their foot and you have 2, and in japan they have a machine that is 2 extra arms controlled with your feet! Hands are awesome!
As for programming the unfortunate design you have right now use pogo pins. Press fit into a 3d printed block for your spacing and solder your wires to the pogos. You can even use nearby chips and put recesses in the block to go over the chips to align the pins so it sits in the same spot every time. Just a few minutes in a 3d cad tool to get the spacing right and 20 minutes of print time.
I don't even think you need to go the route of pogo pins. I've printed a little jig that holds wires at a particular spacing so I can insert them simultaneously into a tiny terminal block easily. I think that would be good enough. Takes like 3 minutes to CAD up. You basically are just bodging together your own header pins. OR. If your pads are spaced the same width as a actual header pins, just plug the wires into a single block.
Incredible lol. This such a familiar case "nah it would take so much effort to do it right, I'll just do it the dumb way once"...proceeds to di it the dumb way dozens of times. I know you could bang out a 3d printed piggyback that uses some pogo pins like 3 minutes flat lol. Clough42 has a great video on this "The 3D Printed Test Fixtures I Use For My Products"
Could you just 3D print a simple bridge that stands over the PCB with slots for the wires at the correct spacing (or even better have pogo pins)? Then you just place the bridge over the board while aligning the pins and then press down while burning it. Should maybe be an hour or two of work to design, print, and assemble it.
You could throw hot glue at the bottom at the wires to make something similar to a pencil holder grip so that you only need one hand to hold them together as a group. A blob about 1cm from the end I think.
For a stepper driver I made I had test pads like this and I just 3D printed a little block in which I glued pogo pins, kind of like a custom connector I hold in place for flashing it work nicely! The first version had a very stupid design flaw where the reset button was on the opposite side of the pads so pressing the thing in place would hold the reset... Learned something from that for sure hahahaha
I really like tag connect programming headers (get the ones that have clips that hook into holes in the board, I promise it's worth it). The main benefit is the bit on the receiving board is just board features, no part. Unfortunately they're pretty expensive for what they are. Unfortunately², it would also require a respin of this board to use them.
I once made a charger for a fitbit watch by pushing heated pins through a sheet of plastic and adding a clothes peg to hold the thing in place.... If I recall correctly, the plastic was from a broken storage bin of the Ikea Samla vareity.. Took 5 mins to line up and then I just pushed the pins through. You could probably use pogo pins if you want to be fancy
Early fpv drone days when flashing simonK firmware onto electronic speed controller's, I had to make a lead to do the same task. I made a lead out of a ribbon cable with cores cut out to get the spacing correct, then glued together with hot glue to hold it straight. Still had to manually hold the flashing cable. Now with access to 3d printing, you could 3d print a small tool with a spring loaded pins to contact the board. You have the pad spacing measurements :)
Probably attach the wires to a piece of header strip and glue that to one of those insulated alligator clips and clamp that across the contact pads. I also have a welding vise grip that could be adjusted to clamp a small spot like that while reaching around any parts that would obstruct straight clips. But if I was getting fancy I'd maybe use pogo pins instead of header strip.
Not sure if this is the right thing. But in a compromise of quick and dirty holding wires and full blown jig. I like these tools as helping hands: Sensepeek pcbite, Probe holder X 1.0 Tag connect mentioned down here is also great thing. But this includes redesign.
Embarrassing but I have the exact same problem and use my nose to click the burn button. For QFP chips, you can get these little spring-loaded breakouts that you clamp the chip into and burn it via breadboard connections.
If the spacing on those test points is right, grab a servo header pin strip, solder the wires to the 3 pins, and at least you have a single unit to hold against the pads.
Homie had so little effort he couldn't even bother with getting this done during November. That's commitment right there 👌
And yet he made a 10 minute ad revenue bilking video out of a 30 second short.
3 pogo pins on a small piece of stripboard/veroboard. Would take 5 minutes to solder up, and then you can hold all 3 pins with one hand.
Yeah that's the obvious solution, fingers crossed that the spacing is standard so it's easy to get it to line up using veroboard...
Could probably do a simple 3D print that would hold the pins on an arm and base would align the pcb.
@@lawrenceharris7717 Yup, designing a small 3D printed jig for a few pogo pins are even just some Dupont male connectors would be done in 5 minutes. Just something that precisely fits over the board and pushes three pins down on the board with bit of weight on the back of the jig,, hell just use a paper weight.
To quote Henry Ford "If you want to find a better way to do a job, give it to a lazy man" so in the spirit of no effort November I suggest cutting down a strip of plastic from a credit card just wide enough to span the 3 pads. Then super glue the wires to the card so that the exposed wires extend past the end of the card. Bend the wires over the edge of the card so the side of the wires will contact the pads.
If it's close enough to the edge you can drill three holes in a wooden clothespeg for pogo pins.
personally I use my nose to press the mouse button in situations like this
that's what the foot pedals are for
@@bob2859where are hey? Didn't discover them on my pc yet
I have also done this! Feels especially goofy, but gets the job done
@@bps.shorts And use a trackball mouse, so it doesn't move off the button when you press it.
...or the space bar, that's safer!
I was expecting a 3d-printed jig to hold the wires, but then I saw the blue tape. PROBLEM SOLVED.
Would love more of this low effort behind the scenes stuff!
From years of DIY electronics, one thing I've learned:
- if you have to do it once, leave it stupid
- if you even THINK that you'd have to do it more than once, make it good, usable, painless and easy
For exactly the reasons you've stated - yes, it might take only 40 minutes, once. But when you do it 10 times, that's almost a whole workday. Spent doing nothing.
A whole work day spent doing nothing...
Actually sounds pretty nice.
@@PatrickKQ4HBDIn this case it's more like a wholeday of being stressed out about not being able to do anything, I feel.
3D printed "board shaped hole" fixture with some pogo-pins in the bottom.
Push board into hole, click go.
Yeah haha.
It's almost funny how trivial the fix is (you don't even need a PCB for the pogo pins - just glue them in!). And the board is a rectangle, it would take about two minutes to do the CAD.
I came here to say this, I have done this many times, print the holes for the pogo pins to press in.
You might want to consider Tag-connect for new designs. It's a footprint you can add to the circuit board, and you can then by a matching cable from them for programming. A good compromise between holding pins by hand, and designing your own board.
I've used this in low production quantity products where the footprint is available
Tag-connect 100% ftw
I love the tag connect connector
Tag-connect is awesome. Just a relatively tiny footprint you can throw on all your boards and just not worry about it going forward.
thank you, didnt know that existed
Tag-connect ;)
The cool thing is that it's just a footprint, no component needed so really a zero-effort, zero-soldering, zero-time, pretty much zero-cost solution, especially given that this footprint is present in most EDA softwares.
(I said "pretty much 0 cost" because you have to buy the connector which isn't especially cheap for what it is, but it's a one-off : there's 0 cost associated with each PCB you create).
The connector then just "clips" on this footprint, and there you go, free hands ;)
c.f Phil's Lab channel (really really good channel when it comes to electronic design), he's using this in pretty much all his boards.
TAG CONNECT EVERYWHERE! Costs nothing, small, easy to use...can't beat it. I've even taken to throwing it on first-run prototypes where I just want to break out an I2C or SPI bus to test pads just because it's there instead of a 0.1" header or JST connector because those boards are never going to leave the bench.
Tag connect for sure this is absolutely the correct answer
The Tag Connector for the Atmel ICE is reversed. If you're going to go this route, MAKE SURE!!! you get the LEMTA (Atmel backwards) variant of the connector. The header on the connector will then be in the correct orientation for you white Atmel ICE you have there on your desk.
It's a great solution, though the connector is a little pricey. Over a few boards/design, the cost of not putting a header on your PCB more than makes up for the up front cost of buying the connector.
Absolutely love the TagConnect system, always plop the lil 6 pin SWD footprint on any design as a backup.
It’s a bit fragile, the plastic hooks are easy to break.
"I'm ignoring any optimisation in service of 'how do we get to the result fastest as possible?'" reminds me of how some businesses operate.
"shortest path to value"
No-Effort improvement:
1) Put three properly spaced holes in the middle of a sturdy piece of cardboard like a playing card
2) Stick the wires through so they point out a little bit
3) Fold over the cardboard where the holes are so you can press the card together to hold them in place
Tada. You freed up your other hand. :) Should also be less finnicky
100% this.
jigs are dead easy.
even a blob of hot glue would work
Unironically, this is the most relatable video I’ve ever watched.
Next time I’m holding down the boot wires praying that I will finally be able to press the mouse button with telekinesis and inevitably cursing my past self, I will know that I am not suffering alone.
Pogo pins! Mill-Max has a huge variety. If you set those pads up with the standard 0.1” spacing, you can just use a scrap of protoboard to hold the pins.
The next step would be to add a base plate and Destaco toggle clamp to put pressure on the board/pins.
embedded electronics engineer here
what you want is called a (custom) programming fixture - the cheap way is to buy some wide pitched male connectors, split them apart + put them in some "mold" that lines up with the programming pins on the ava + wire the appropriate SWD, SCLK, GND, PWR pins to the male connectors (use dupont male to female ribbon cables - or ditch the male connectors and just use male to male dupont connectors). i.e sam ice -> dupont connectors -> glued in a mold -> male connectors exposed on the "bottom" side of the mold
make something to align the mold w/ the ava boards and use gravity to set the male connector onto the ava programming pads - a 3d printed box would work, and the easy thing is to make the mold the a tad wider in each dimension as the ava board but with a riser the length of the aforementioned connectors such that the connectors touch pretty well onto the ava board
your issue is going to be making sure of signal integrity with the sam ice to the other end of the male connectors, the clock line has to as close to the same length as SWD (single wire debug)
fyi there are services that can put firmware onto a reel of ICs and repackage them for you to use - im not sure on volume/availablity, we do this inhouse at my work
Hot air soldering with a heat shrink gun has got to be a close second. Treat yourself to a real hot air rework station, my dude!
The ritual of this is precious, and I'd miss it once fixed.
PCBite has those arms with springs behind the pins and they work great
And they're droopy (unlike helping hands that you might mistake them for) which keeps pressure on the pin to hold it in place perfectly. They're awesome
PCBites are awesome! I usually place testpoints everywhere since they don't cost anything. PCBites make debugging new designs with testpoints easy.
Yep! PCBite for random signal test pass, TagConnect for nice programming :)
That's what l understood from this video: please send a PCBite for free!)
I suppose you could 3D print a small jig that would hold Ava and then clamp down onto the correct pads with pogo pins. That might need like a tiny custom PCB to mount the pogo pins to, but I bet you could knock that design out in a couple hours, and it might generalize to use with future boards.
Hi Joe, I had exactly the same problem to solve, except that I had to do the initial programming (of a PIC32MM microcontroller) for a lot of boards. I soldered a strip of pogo pins onto a circuit board, soldered on cables and hot glued the whole thing into a small tray. I scripted the tray with OpenScad to fit the board and printed it with a 3D printer.
The programming process now only takes seconds: Press the board into the tray onto the pins with one hand and start programming with the other hand. Done.
No effort November released in December is just exemplarily execution of the theme 👏
Out of curiosity, how many bricked bootloaders has this resulted in? I imagine one poorly-timed sneeze borks the bits
so you just hit "burn bootloader" again.
You’ll probably never live this down Joe… One on the internet, forever on the internet. Thanks for sharing! 6:55
I think PCBite got already mentioned but for any future iteration get yourself a tag-connect cable and use the footprint. Thats the industry standard for when you don't want a connector on the board but need some guided pogo pin insertion or semi permanent connection
This is the PN you most likely want for least board space and most compatability (like for ATMEL-ICE): TC2030-CTX-NL 6-Pin “No Legs”
similar technology would be Würth Redfit
Just needs to buy some pogo pins and solder them to his existing wires. From there he already has a decent 3rd hand that would work.
There's a little clamp thing you can buy from ads fruit called a soc bite connector. It's meant to clamp around specific qfn chips but it can also grab the edge of a board. They're great for doing this
Sounds cool but I can't find any reference to it. Are you sure it's called a "soc bite connector"?
@@aspzx it's SOICbite, uses cheap SOIC-8 test clips.
This is very blursed and I fully support it
I also fully support red AVAs
In a similar situation I have jammed needles or paper clips through a piece of cork with the correct spacing.
I love this, I'm a (fairly) low volume pcb design engineer and have done things like this many times. Others have suggested it but I'll reiterate it: popo pins with a 3d printed jig would significantly improve this. I recommend adding some vias to those pads to assist with positioning. How you're currently doing it would also be made easier if you replaced the pads with through-holes that you leverage the pins against during the bootload. They also make QFN breakouts you can place the chips in and bootload before even putting them on the board.
On that topic, in my experience, most low-volute assembly houses will place any component you provide them and very often they don't even need to be on reels. If you purchase bulk of those bespoke chips, services like Advanced Assembly or Sierra Circuits will place them without hassle.
You need yourself a bare-board programming connector. In a pinch, soicbite. If you're a little more serious, Tag-Connect.
Pogo-pins could’ve been your best buddy.
Love these style of videos! Keep up the great work!
1) Get cheap USB mouse (or AVR with V-USB) and foot pedal - boom, one hand free!
2) Make 3D printed guide for your pogo pins, so they will always easily align over that microSD slot.
3) If you are ordering new boards, can't you make pins through hole?
We used point 2 and 3 in previous work. Pogo pins self align in holes of PCB and we had pogo pins epoxied on board cover, so you just inserted board in cover (got aligned by mounting holes) and pressed BURN. Worked perfectly :)
what is the pin spacing and do you have a PO Box
As others have mentioned - TAGconnect is really cool, a bit expensive, but you only need one cable. Also gives you an option to use SWD/JTAG directly during development, instead of bootloaders, which is very likely faster and more convenient. And on top of that you can do debugging (Ozone, VSCode, etc), access any memory/registers contents and output logs via RTT.
solid core 22ga wire, 2 popsicle sticks, epoxy.
-run the wires down the length of one popsicle stick, epoxy in place, use the second popsicle stick to make a popsicle stick wire sandwich.
-leave enough wire at the output to cut, strip, and bend to the required spacing for the bootloader.
-leave enough wire at the input to solder a connector that can be easily connected to the hardware that burs the bootloader
-add more epoxy to the output end to lock the wires in place once the spacing is correct
single hand boot loading from parts we've already seen in your videos.
just get a small 3x1 piece of 2.54 header, and bend pins if necessary
Should look in to “flying line” “flying lead” “fly-by-wire electronics debug boards. Adjustable spring loaded pins and used for things like memory recovery so should be reliable enough for this. Cheap to get from the usual import sources.
You need to check out tag-connect connectors. They are basically connectors that clip onto a PCB and have pogo pins, so the pogo pins create the electrical connection for however many pins you need, and they clip onto the board through a couple of small holes so you don’t even need to hold onto it. Some connectors don’t have clips, so you’d need to hold onto them but it would reduce the number of holes you need cut in the PCB, as they just have a few holes to make sure the connector can’t be oriented incorrectly.
My friend who was the electrical lead for his formula SAE team learned about them while he was designing boards for his formula car and recently turned me onto them. It would probably require a redesign of your board currently, but it’s worth keeping in mind for your next board.
Also, you could probably design a super small board that you can solder pogo pins onto in order to basically be able to accomplish this super easily.
This is my favorite bps video par none
Couple of things you can do to make your life easier:
1) find a different assembler, most do accept a mix of their supply and your supply of parts. I recall pcbway having no issues with it.
2) digikey do preprogramming of chips so you can buy them, send them your files and they will program the whole reel for you. Not free but it can save you a headace
you can use "tag connect" footprint and connector for programming the bootloader
Haha. Ebay a test clamp with pogo pins for 10 bucks 😂
Got on here to say just that- pogo pins on a board that “mates” to your original boards mounting holes temporarily (that takes care of alignment of the pogo pins.)
Had a similar problem with one of my ATMEGA328p designs, the solution was to simply get a 3*2 ICSP header exclusively for burning the bootloader, it's worth the few cents and maybe 15mins of extra design time + most PCBA places will be happy to solder that on for you!
few ways to do it less painfully,
use a 1x3 2.54mm header footprint unstuffed, easy to just shove the ends of the wires into the holes, or solder wires to a header to stick in there temporarily
use a tag connect footprint (might be the thing with the claws mentioned) - the cables a bit pricey tho
the piggyback probably only needs fab, no assembly, just hand solder the pogo pins in, and break them out to big 2.54mm pitch headers
you could probably solder to the pads using 32 gauge (preferably enameled) wires - i work on similarly pitched / sized pads, and this works for me
but definitely hard to really do anything after the fact, and not too big of a deal to do it by hand once every 2 years
You can use pogo-pins which are spring-loaded pins to probe those exposed pads. You can also design a 3D-printed holder with the same dimensions as the board to hold the entire board in place. The 3D printed holder can have holes that you can mount the pogo pins in place. This solution allows you to just plop the board into the holder while the pogo-pins contact and apply pressure to the pads, and you can have a hands-off bootloader flashing process.
Thats all right, there were boards I used to troubleshoot that had a blown fuse. I'd replace the fuse and if it blew again I'd put a jumper across it. When I'd turn it on again the top of the bad chip would blow off and ping iff the back of my work bench. Replace the chip, test, replace the fuse and done!
Spiritually no effort November smooth brain idea: take tape, tape it on the PCB, mark where the dots on the PCB are on the tape on the non sticky side, then just tape the wires on the sticky side with the right spacing that you know from taping them down. Idk just an idea.
I’ve seen you do a lot of things that make me scratch my head and say ‘wtf’. This is probably up there with those.
Skip the "model another different thing in another piece of software", you already have what you need!
Print the board on paper at 1:1 scale, glue the printout to a piece of wood drill through the pads, stick pogo pins into it (or just thicker wires maybe?), glue them in place
Extra credit if you take 2 minutes on the saw to cut the wood to size, and then nail "walls" to two sides to make an alignment jig!
I'm struggling to find it, but a creator I watched solved this using a 3d printed jig. the center had a screw (yes with ridges) that would go through a screw hole in the PCB, and pogo pins around it centrally. The pogo pins would provide torque, which would cause a plastic backstop to rest against the PCB, pivoting around the screw, since the ridges would 'grip' the hole. It worked SO well, that I'm surprised it didn't take off elsewhere. I just wish I could remember who it was to give credit. It also had a non pogo pin for alignment only, that was larger then the rest.
For small runs, I like to 3d print a "tray" for the board with holes for pogo pins. I solder wires to the pogo pins then super glue them into the holes in the print.
Use a Spider Board. When microSD card go bad and they want to retrieve the data, they can "sand" the back side and attach needle like thingys to contact some pads with enough pressure to read from the card. This could be a solution
Is there any reason you can't add a header for programming? That would be my go-to.
But without changing the Ava board, I'd glue together some pogo-pins in the right spacing and use that for one-handed operation. Hell, you could even use blue tape.
I feel seen. This is how my keyboard works too.
My recommendation is a piece of cardboard that you can press the wires through (just to hold them), then wrap the exposed wires across the edge of the cardboard (so you can see where you’re putting them). Hopefully that’s a 5min job to build.
But also, yeah, this is the dumb stuff we all do. Sometimes it’s not worth the time to fix. Please keep sharing.
Love this!
If you change the pads on the PCB to be through hole, you can stick some wire through it and it should hold good enough on its own
Watch this still be the mechanism 5 years later :)
3d print a jig that fits your PCB with holes in it that line up with your pads. Put pogo pins through the holes.
Push the PCB onto the jig, hit program, job done.
Some assembly houses let you send them components in small quantities. At work we have some important components in stock because they can be hard to get and we just send them to the assembler. And I'm talking small quantities, we often order only ~5 PCBs because they're only for internal use and we don't need that many.
Simplest solution: Do through hole pins with 0.254 spacing. Then just stick a header through and hold it at a slight angle.
pogo pins and a quick 3d printed jig. 15 minutes to design, 10 minutes to print, 5 minutes to mount the pins.
Maybe making a simple 3D printed clip that holds the wires in alignment could help? The alignment clip could then be clamped in your desk's mini clamp that could then hold the 3d printed clip in place, applying a little pressure from the wires to the board. That would free up a hand and yourself to walk away while the code was being uploaded and free up time for you to do other more productive things instead of having to hold steady like a surgeon for 45 minutes. I think the two halves of the wire alignment clip could be designed and printed in roughly 30 minutes then superglued together, so that would give a much better time ROI than having to design and manufacture a new piggy back board.
No effort november: being too lazy to flip the calendar over to december.
It's amazing how he can 3d print a complicated rocket system, but not a piece of plastic that can hold pogo pins or just some wires
Easiest way is to take the male headers for 1mm type since that is what it looks like you did for spacing, solder to them, then touch that instead. Making a pogo pin PCB also works. Worst case scenario you can get sp10 probe helping hands. Its basically probes built into the helping hands where you can connect the wire to the probe for the programming
I normally just 3D print a jig. On that jig I have a way to permanently attach a little homemade perfboard pin to pogo pin adapter, and a way to temporarily clip the target board. Typically, that’s just some alignment posts and a couple of binder clips with kapton tape on them!
Pogo pins and coming up with a suitable plate to brace them (3d printed?) is the way to go, bunch of fly leads off the pins going to a bespoke breakout board. Jobs done
No suggestions. This is peak process efficiency
This is interesting content! Love the problems I can understand and then see comments section ideas
simple: if the flashing takes more than 10 seconds i would simply solder the wires and desolder them after uploading.
if shorter:
space the 3 wires correctly and use hotglue or sugru to keep that spacing. adding short springs or pogo pins and gluing them for correct spacing is also an option, obviously try to place the glue as close as possible to the copper that makes the electrical connection. still hacky but should free one hand
Use a foot pedal to make the selection on the screen. :)
Love your videos. They always give me that little (sometimes big) nudge to get back to work on my own project. Which, by the way, is a totally unique type of desktop 3D printer.
Hah -- have def done this before. Nowadays I use the Tag-Connect TC2030-NL footprints (super compact) on all of the ST32-based boards I design -- but they also make specific cables for various Atmel, Microchip, and other archs (or you can just do it yourself using their connector). They typically have two footprint types: Regular and NL (No Legs). The NL version just has registration pins, and it comes with a tiny PCB to allow you to put under the board if you need to do extended debugging/multiple programmings (can be kinda fiddley... I need to buy the regular version at some point...).
For more extensive debugging, on some boards, I will also design my own edge connector that can be used with a 3D-printed fixture + pogo pins (some of the audio boards I've designed have this so that I can read out and calibrate the various voltage references without having to probe tiny points). Although for the small boards you typically use, may not have enough room for that.
I do 3D printed jigs for small scale test runs for PCBs. You take your Test pad pattern, 3D print that pattern with holes instead of Pads where you can shove pogo pins into to make your "Piggy Back board". Then just hand solder your wire to the pins and that is usually good enough.
They have standardized pogo pin clip layouts for this that you can just get cables for. For one time fifty bucks you have yourself a TC2030 cable, design six test pads and three holes into whatever fcu comes after AVA, and you have the same result.
Hey Joe I am designing some flight computers for my spaceshot and I was wondering what you use to design your borads. Also do I see another Mustache?
If you use the correct spacing you can just break off SIP-connectors, solder wires to those and hold those against the board. Having plated drillholes obviously helps with alignement, but either way now you just need one hand for three wires.
Generous estimate for time spend making this ”tool” is less than two minutes, assuming you already have the wires, source of SIP connectors, and a hot soldering iron. If balancing the cables cost you 20 seconds extra this pays off after flashing four boards.
I know someone who did this using their foot and you have 2, and in japan they have a machine that is 2 extra arms controlled with your feet! Hands are awesome!
Others have said it, but I'll say it again, 3D print a couple jigs (one for each set of pads) and glue in pogo pins. It's easy and cheap.
this was helpful, since i now feel a little better for my different bad janky set ups
Physical embodiment of Tech Debt. It never goes away.
As for programming the unfortunate design you have right now use pogo pins. Press fit into a 3d printed block for your spacing and solder your wires to the pogos. You can even use nearby chips and put recesses in the block to go over the chips to align the pins so it sits in the same spot every time. Just a few minutes in a 3d cad tool to get the spacing right and 20 minutes of print time.
I don't even think you need to go the route of pogo pins. I've printed a little jig that holds wires at a particular spacing so I can insert them simultaneously into a tiny terminal block easily. I think that would be good enough. Takes like 3 minutes to CAD up. You basically are just bodging together your own header pins.
OR. If your pads are spaced the same width as a actual header pins, just plug the wires into a single block.
- 3 thru holes instead of pads
- magnetic pad connector like smart watch chargers
Incredible lol. This such a familiar case "nah it would take so much effort to do it right, I'll just do it the dumb way once"...proceeds to di it the dumb way dozens of times.
I know you could bang out a 3d printed piggyback that uses some pogo pins like 3 minutes flat lol. Clough42 has a great video on this "The 3D Printed Test Fixtures I Use For My Products"
Could you just 3D print a simple bridge that stands over the PCB with slots for the wires at the correct spacing (or even better have pogo pins)? Then you just place the bridge over the board while aligning the pins and then press down while burning it. Should maybe be an hour or two of work to design, print, and assemble it.
Flabbergasted not to see some hot glue contraption doing this for you
You could throw hot glue at the bottom at the wires to make something similar to a pencil holder grip so that you only need one hand to hold them together as a group. A blob about 1cm from the end I think.
For a stepper driver I made I had test pads like this and I just 3D printed a little block in which I glued pogo pins, kind of like a custom connector I hold in place for flashing it work nicely! The first version had a very stupid design flaw where the reset button was on the opposite side of the pads so pressing the thing in place would hold the reset... Learned something from that for sure hahahaha
I really like tag connect programming headers (get the ones that have clips that hook into holes in the board, I promise it's worth it). The main benefit is the bit on the receiving board is just board features, no part. Unfortunately they're pretty expensive for what they are. Unfortunately², it would also require a respin of this board to use them.
Incredibly relatable content tbh
I once made a charger for a fitbit watch by pushing heated pins through a sheet of plastic and adding a clothes peg to hold the thing in place.... If I recall correctly, the plastic was from a broken storage bin of the Ikea Samla vareity..
Took 5 mins to line up and then I just pushed the pins through.
You could probably use pogo pins if you want to be fancy
I'd consider changing the 3-pin pads for vias, so I could just fit the wires within them - or even adding a header there for dupont wires.
Early fpv drone days when flashing simonK firmware onto electronic speed controller's, I had to make a lead to do the same task. I made a lead out of a ribbon cable with cores cut out to get the spacing correct, then glued together with hot glue to hold it straight. Still had to manually hold the flashing cable.
Now with access to 3d printing, you could 3d print a small tool with a spring loaded pins to contact the board. You have the pad spacing measurements :)
Probably attach the wires to a piece of header strip and glue that to one of those insulated alligator clips and clamp that across the contact pads. I also have a welding vise grip that could be adjusted to clamp a small spot like that while reaching around any parts that would obstruct straight clips. But if I was getting fancy I'd maybe use pogo pins instead of header strip.
Most assembly houses will take free-issued parts so you could provide them with the bootloader chip and have the assembler fit them.
No effort wasted flipping his callendar to December.
Not sure if this is the right thing. But in a compromise of quick and dirty holding wires and full blown jig. I like these tools as helping hands: Sensepeek pcbite, Probe holder X 1.0
Tag connect mentioned down here is also great thing. But this includes redesign.
Embarrassing but I have the exact same problem and use my nose to click the burn button. For QFP chips, you can get these little spring-loaded breakouts that you clamp the chip into and burn it via breadboard connections.
No effort, i make hot glue negative prints and melt the wires into them. Now I just need to hold the hot glue blob that neatly slots in.
If the spacing on those test points is right, grab a servo header pin strip, solder the wires to the 3 pins, and at least you have a single unit to hold against the pads.
As they say, if it's stupid and it works, it's not stupid