Board re-design

SteveD0 · 2020-11-16T23:31:48+00:00

You had mentioned in some of the discussions that there’ll be another rev of the board. When you do it would be good if it could be designed so both headers...

aldras

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?

jaredwolff

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.

aldras

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

I was going to add pins to the feather but I found the TC2030 holder on the bottom will not fit if I add male pin headers, I think that is the standard feather header. I looked at adding extended female headers but then https://www.adafruit.com/product/4777 wouldn’t plug in without adding https://www.adafruit.com/product/400
I’m thinking https://www.adafruit.com/product/400 in the bottom with spacers holding them off the PCB allowing the TC2030 holder to still fit then trim the excess pins off or just leave them..
Any ideas?

jaredwolff

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.

rbrtwtrs

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

jaredwolff

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. 😀

rbrtwtrs

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.

jaredwolff

rbrtwtrs Haha yea… guilty as charged. Some things could move to the bottom but it’s problematic without going to 6 layer.

I do realize though that some folks don’t have TC cables and that was a bummer from a debugging perspective. Most folks can do most through the usage of the bootloader. I find myself using newtmgr more often than searching for my nRF9160 DK and TC cable to program.

K2AAE

jaredwolff V4? Move the Battery connector and USB to the bottom, SIM card to the rear, move the TC center behind the USB and the devices currently there to where the USB and Battery connectors were? Don’t go for the 5X2@1.27 it is just to big.
I did discover that the CP2102 isn’t around right now, the CP2105 is and the PCF85263 has more for $0.10, micros-seconds and stop watch plus battery backup support. Last the 32Khz Crystal isn’t around, I found a 5ppm, 50-ECX-.327-CDX-2096CT-ND for around the same price.
I noticed you have stock again, I was going to order another board after killing mine, you were OOS, good thing, I discovered I’d put the wrong Hologram SIM back in after my Verizon SIM disaster… The AT+CESQ doesn’t seem to work unless your SIM and Device are registered…

jaredwolff

Thanks for the feedback @K2AAE. And yep back in stock. The parts you mentioned have been fun to procure 😭

K2AAE

jaredwolff Finally found some CP2102! Mouser just got some, only 1K but I got a few. Quote of 52 weeks for some parts….

jaredwolff

Yea those are tricky parts!! 😢

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