Board re-design

SteveD0 If this is the case why 10 pins when only 6 are used? Or am I missing something.?

Functionally only 4 pins are being used. So the extra 6 on the JTAG connector are not being used at all! It’s standard this way because other chips do require more control pins, etc.

SteveD0 that is a j-tag 2×5 female cable to dupont cables

Why would you need a female one? I don’t believe those exist.

SteveD0 There are some adapters available, but then I still would need the cables to connect to the adapter. How would you approach this or what are you using?

I’m not sure what you mean. Currently I’m connecting the tag connect from my programming board of choice directly to the programming pins on the board. Can you clarify?

SteveD0 “nix the tag connect and use the standard 10-pin connector”.

I’m talking about V2 adjustments for the future.

SteveD0 To the second point, if I only need 4 connection, can I use 4 dupont cables to connect between the 4 header locations on the programming board and 4 stacking header locations on the nRF9160?

How are you stacking the boards? If you stack the nRF9160 Feather on top then you don’t have to worry about accessing it. Most Adafruit boards come unsoldered so you can add a female header instead of a male. Or, alternatively, use a doubler or tripler.

SteveD0 There you go! The more the merrier. Remember as you start using these boards you need to make sure other signals play nicely with each other. I’ve been working with a Particle Xenon + nRF9160 Feather an I had to cut the battery trace between the two. The battery chargers were not happy with each other.

jaredwolff I checked out V2 looks like the tag connector is still there and V3 appears to be tag. Just another $60 tool, still better than the $300 molex crimp tool!

Personally I have come to like the TagConnect, yeah its an investment to get one, but I am seeing more and more boards that use the TagConnect. To name a few, Nordic dev baords, Texas Instruments boards, etc. It saves board space and BOM cost on pins/connectors.

I am starting to use TagConnect on boards at work, see how the other people at work react to it, I really didn’t ask before I had the boards made. Not leaving my personal cable at the office to disappear, they will have to get some for the office.

If you do buy one, get both a 10 pin and 6 pin version, with all the pins wired straight through (with the larger 0.1″ connectors). You can make adapter boards to route the pins as you need for different uses.

Suggestion, the pin numbers on the silk don’t match the GPIO numbers on the nRF9160, was there a reason for this? I guess does not really matter if you got a schematic to check the pin connections, was this to match the pin numbers on the Adafruit Feather platform?

aldras exactly. The idea being its showing which pins can be use for what purpose. You can use the pins by their names in the DTS but I haven’t had a chance to create an example based on it.

jaredwolff
Ah, thanks. Next time I recompile the project I will try this out, I was not sure I could use the pins by their names.

K2AAE well, if you don’t mind modifying your board, you can always solder wires to the SWD test points on the bottom of the board an run them out. Using the Tag Connect with anything plugged together will be tough.

jaredwolff I vote for using standard connector like a Samtec FTSH-105-01-F-DV-007-K-P It has a pretty small footprint.

rbrtwtrs I have been going back and forth on this. It’s rough to add on this design. Did it with another one that’s coming out and there was enough room.

I can see that staying inside the bounds of the feather form factor definately limits how much you can pack on there and you certainly packed it in there. 10lbs of sausage in a 5lb casing.