@@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.
That is literally the full professional method for production programming and testing. Just with a standard box and PCB clamp that the 3d frame and pogo pins are stuck onto, although that's not necessary for a small run. It's so easy to do that you kick yourself after you finally try it and realise how much unnecessary pain you have put yourself through in the past.
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.
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
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.
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 work as a design engineer and we have done this for the last year on one of our latest designs for programming all of the power controllers on. Too inconvenient to solder on a header and then remove it. Can't leave the headers on because it wouldn't fit in the chassis. The design was meant to have pre-programmed parts, but we just haven't gotten them yet during the prototyping phase. So, I hold the wires while my colleague runs the software. There's like 12 controllers to program per board. My nose doesn't feel itchy all week until 20 seconds after I start holding the wires in place.
I designed a little PCB with holes for 3-5 pogo pins and a couple of 3mm screw holes and ordered a bag of them to keep on hand. For situations like this, I just solder up three pogo pins, hook up the wires, and I have a probe that can be held in one hand to connect to all three pads. If I'm feeling ambitious, I can 3D print a small plastic hood to make it easier to handle. And if I really want to go crazy, I can 3D print a tray with the pogo pins in it so I can just slap the board face down on the fixture and hit the button.
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
This is the second video I've watched on this channel and I have to say I'm grateful for these because there are so many channels that are like "I'm going to build this super cool complex thing" then a montage and success! We all know that's not how it really works and its nice to see someone be honest about it!
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”
Usually the burner software checks the written memory against a locally calculated checksum, so you would know if it was borked and you could do it again :)
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
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.
I love your openness here. It’s so refreshing and is a good reminder that you don’t always have to over engineer everything. Relates right back to the video about “get the project finished”
For batch of protos and quick programming, I take the step file of the PCB, add holes for pogo pins, add little arms/clips to align to the actual PCB and print. Push the pogo pins in and wire to the programmer for a quick "bed of nails". Add any extra pins for signals I may want to monitor on the 3D step. Pogo pins are available at Mouser/Digikey in many lengths, diameters and force.
I've done this sort of thing with programmers and fly leads. I just line up the leads in the right order and tape them together with scotch tape. It's flimsy but all it needs to do is hold it together while you're holding it down. The more legit solution is to 3d print a little box to hold a pcb with pogo pins. The pins protrude through a hole in the top of the box in the perfect place to make contact. The board being programmed sits in a shallow cutout for positioning. Those clamps to hold it down are called Horizontal Quick-Release Toggle Clamp and you can get them at home depot.
I used to use pogo-pins and just poke some holes through a piece of balsawood. This allowed me nice control of pin patters/spacings etc and usually there was 1-2 holes on the boards that I could use for alignment by adding some steel dowels to the balsa as well. The magic comes from spacing the pads out so the board can rest on the spring loaded pins after being located by the steel dowels. Depending on the size of the board it may need a light push on the top but mostly it would be fine without it. Nowadays a 3d printer makes the equivalent to the balsa plates but I have also used a lasercutter.
Since i don't stock pogo pins, my trick has always been bending some solid core wire to hit the pads, then hold it with one hand and type with the other. I've used this trick to program numerous motor controllers, and connect to the uart pads on a router i bricked. Works great, doesn't require exotic pins, and you don't need to painstakingly match the spacing of the pads on your scrap of protoboard
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.
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.
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.)
I'd also recommend a standardized solution such as J-TAG. You can buy a special cable for each programmer (to maintain pinout) or use a generic - not too different in cost. The cable has 6 pogo pins on it (or more, i use 6) that you can then align and hold with one hand.
That is what stm32 ecosystem done it nicely. Stm23Programmer software has this stupid feature that you click program then the software wait you to connect the pads then upload automatically..
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!
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
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
trackballs are nice for this. You can click the mouse button and be 100% sure you won’t move the pointer. even if you have something like a ZIF holder you can just pop new chips in and program whilst doing/watching something and just click away. (they’re also ergonomic)
You can map a footpedal to your mouse input - move the mouse over the button, swap to other input for the footpedal, get the pins in position and then hit the pedal.
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 :)
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.
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.
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
Instead of pads on the top layer, make them into through-hole pads. Don't space them evenly, make one of them a little further from the others (for polarization). Then 3D print a block with holes in it to hold three sprung gold pins. The pins locate securely into the holes, so you can hold them there with one hand while you click 'program'.
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.
We always add the same header as the ice on our board so you can simply use a straight cable from the ice. If we dont have space for that we 3d print a pogo pin holder tool we make ourselves which holds the 5 pins for programming which you can simply press on the test pads together
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
For new designs place the pads on edge connectors with cutouts like PCI cards are done. Now you can use one connector for all boards. For this design use pogo pins + quick 3d print or glue three pins to a clothespin
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.
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.
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.
If you want to put the minimum amount of effort into fixing this then 3D print a tiny piece of plastic that holds the three wires together so you at least don’t have to space them out and can have an extra hand to use your mouse
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.
one of the easiest things you could do is 3d print a little holder and hot glue your wires in place so you can hold all three to the pins on the board with one hand. seems like that would speed up the process a lot with minimal effort. or if you dont want to design something to print, get a small piece of scrap wood like a paint mixing stick or something and hot glue the wires there
Thanks, this was a cool glimpse on the reality of what you do to make the rockets happen. Also, I totally get you with the need of a third hand. Tag connect is probably what you want, but you can also think about a piece of software that will do a mouse click after a timer.
That comment... "we'll just do it once, then we can move on." - THAT's the catch. You've done it more than once. You'll do it again. Make a pogo pin board. If you wanna be slack about it, use some veroboard for a pogo board. But I strongly recommend getting a proper PCB made for your pogo board. I did the maths on this stuff a while ago; if you have to program more than 2 boards, EVER, it's worth making a pogo pin board. It will save you time & frustration. And it doesn't have to be complicated; I just grabbed an arduino, made a really basic shield with the standard headers and the pogo pins, and soldered it myself. Don't think about it, just do it
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!
I did something similar for an old project, but instead of pads I used .7mm holes. No need for a connector, but it acts as a connector because it's just big enough for a jumper wire to go through with friction and make good contact
I flash my boards also by just holding the pins against the bootloader pins. The difference is that mine have a male pin header, so it is easy to push against and even wedge it on something.
I do PCB design professionally. What we do is set all test pads on 0.100" centers. That way se can just solder some pogo pins into a standard sheet of perf board to make a programming/test jig.
I design boards in EasyEDA and it generates pick and place files in like 1 click. I don't even own a hot air work station or a hot plate or anything, have never assembled SMD components onto a board myself other than for quick fix problems. One of the products I sell does require programming and the engineer who worked on it made a bed of nails jig with a toggle clamp to hold it onto pogo pins and its a lifesaver, its like a 15 second process to program and test one and then move on to the next
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.
Spider holders that are used for microSD card recovery might be convenient (for other things too). Or something like a DuPont 1x3 male connector with *circumsized* ends, to hold it conveniently
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.
i say this with respect...its incredible to me that we have gone from a room of boxes in apolo to a guy in his room...and better then the old on top of that
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.
@@superslash7254 Videos like this are why TH-cam was made
@@superslash7254 Probably made all of 3 dollars on the whole video. So ripoff, much profit, such bilking, wow.
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.
I was expecting a 3d-printed jig to hold the wires, but then I saw the blue tape. PROBLEM SOLVED.
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!
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.
@@PatrickKQ4HBD only if you are not self-employed lol
@@eccomi21 haha, I've been self-employed. Worked my tail off! I'm not great at it. 😮💨👍
And then add the time it took you to document this process in this video and add that to the total time too. 😅
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.
That is literally the full professional method for production programming and testing. Just with a standard box and PCB clamp that the 3d frame and pogo pins are stuck onto, although that's not necessary for a small run. It's so easy to do that you kick yourself after you finally try it and realise how much unnecessary pain you have put yourself through in the past.
Would love more of this low effort behind the scenes stuff!
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 November released in December is just exemplarily execution of the theme 👏
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
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
would a header be appropriately spaced
You’ll probably never live this down Joe… One on the internet, forever on the internet. Thanks for sharing! 6:55
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.
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!
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.
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!)
One of the best things I bought. @mattbrwn was the one that showed me how awesome these things are. I use it all the time now.
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 work as a design engineer and we have done this for the last year on one of our latest designs for programming all of the power controllers on. Too inconvenient to solder on a header and then remove it. Can't leave the headers on because it wouldn't fit in the chassis. The design was meant to have pre-programmed parts, but we just haven't gotten them yet during the prototyping phase. So, I hold the wires while my colleague runs the software. There's like 12 controllers to program per board. My nose doesn't feel itchy all week until 20 seconds after I start holding the wires in place.
I designed a little PCB with holes for 3-5 pogo pins and a couple of 3mm screw holes and ordered a bag of them to keep on hand. For situations like this, I just solder up three pogo pins, hook up the wires, and I have a probe that can be held in one hand to connect to all three pads. If I'm feeling ambitious, I can 3D print a small plastic hood to make it easier to handle. And if I really want to go crazy, I can 3D print a tray with the pogo pins in it so I can just slap the board face down on the fixture and hit the button.
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 the second video I've watched on this channel and I have to say I'm grateful for these because there are so many channels that are like "I'm going to build this super cool complex thing" then a montage and success! We all know that's not how it really works and its nice to see someone be honest about it!
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.
Incredibly relatable content tbh
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.
Usually the burner software checks the written memory against a locally calculated checksum, so you would know if it was borked and you could do it again :)
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
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.
In a similar situation I have jammed needles or paper clips through a piece of cork with the correct spacing.
I love your openness here. It’s so refreshing and is a good reminder that you don’t always have to over engineer everything. Relates right back to the video about “get the project finished”
Making one-off processes as painful as possible is very relatable.
what is the pin spacing and do you have a PO Box
I love these dumb hacks we suffer through in the small scale.
For batch of protos and quick programming, I take the step file of the PCB, add holes for pogo pins, add little arms/clips to align to the actual PCB and print. Push the pogo pins in and wire to the programmer for a quick "bed of nails". Add any extra pins for signals I may want to monitor on the 3D step. Pogo pins are available at Mouser/Digikey in many lengths, diameters and force.
We've been winging it for far too long! Big ups for documenting this.
I've done this sort of thing with programmers and fly leads. I just line up the leads in the right order and tape them together with scotch tape. It's flimsy but all it needs to do is hold it together while you're holding it down. The more legit solution is to 3d print a little box to hold a pcb with pogo pins. The pins protrude through a hole in the top of the box in the perfect place to make contact. The board being programmed sits in a shallow cutout for positioning. Those clamps to hold it down are called Horizontal Quick-Release Toggle Clamp and you can get them at home depot.
I used to use pogo-pins and just poke some holes through a piece of balsawood.
This allowed me nice control of pin patters/spacings etc and usually there was 1-2 holes on the boards that I could use for alignment by adding some steel dowels to the balsa as well.
The magic comes from spacing the pads out so the board can rest on the spring loaded pins after being located by the steel dowels. Depending on the size of the board it may need a light push on the top but mostly it would be fine without it. Nowadays a 3d printer makes the equivalent to the balsa plates but I have also used a lasercutter.
Since i don't stock pogo pins, my trick has always been bending some solid core wire to hit the pads, then hold it with one hand and type with the other. I've used this trick to program numerous motor controllers, and connect to the uart pads on a router i bricked. Works great, doesn't require exotic pins, and you don't need to painstakingly match the spacing of the pads on your scrap of protoboard
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.
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.
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.)
This is very blursed and I fully support it
I also fully support red AVAs
I'd also recommend a standardized solution such as J-TAG. You can buy a special cable for each programmer (to maintain pinout) or use a generic - not too different in cost. The cable has 6 pogo pins on it (or more, i use 6) that you can then align and hold with one hand.
That is what stm32 ecosystem done it nicely. Stm23Programmer software has this stupid feature that you click program then the software wait you to connect the pads then upload automatically..
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!
Love these style of videos! Keep up the great work!
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
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
trackballs are nice for this. You can click the mouse button and be 100% sure you won’t move the pointer. even if you have something like a ZIF holder you can just pop new chips in and program whilst doing/watching something and just click away.
(they’re also ergonomic)
You can map a footpedal to your mouse input - move the mouse over the button, swap to other input for the footpedal, get the pins in position and then hit the pedal.
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 :)
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.
Nothing is more permanent then a temporary solution…
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.
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
Instead of pads on the top layer, make them into through-hole pads. Don't space them evenly, make one of them a little further from the others (for polarization). Then 3D print a block with holes in it to hold three sprung gold pins. The pins locate securely into the holes, so you can hold them there with one hand while you click 'program'.
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.
We always add the same header as the ice on our board so you can simply use a straight cable from the ice. If we dont have space for that we 3d print a pogo pin holder tool we make ourselves which holds the 5 pins for programming which you can simply press on the test pads together
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.
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.
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.
you can use "tag connect" footprint and connector for programming the bootloader
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.
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.
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.
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!
For new designs place the pads on edge connectors with cutouts like PCI cards are done. Now you can use one connector for all boards. For this design use pogo pins + quick 3d print or glue three pins to a clothespin
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.
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.
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.
If you want to put the minimum amount of effort into fixing this then 3D print a tiny piece of plastic that holds the three wires together so you at least don’t have to space them out and can have an extra hand to use your mouse
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.
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
You need yourself a bare-board programming connector. In a pinch, soicbite. If you're a little more serious, Tag-Connect.
either 3d print a little bracket or hot glue the wires to a piece of plastic correctly spaced, then rubber-band it to the board
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.
one of the easiest things you could do is 3d print a little holder and hot glue your wires in place so you can hold all three to the pins on the board with one hand. seems like that would speed up the process a lot with minimal effort. or if you dont want to design something to print, get a small piece of scrap wood like a paint mixing stick or something and hot glue the wires there
Thanks, this was a cool glimpse on the reality of what you do to make the rockets happen. Also, I totally get you with the need of a third hand. Tag connect is probably what you want, but you can also think about a piece of software that will do a mouse click after a timer.
That comment... "we'll just do it once, then we can move on." - THAT's the catch.
You've done it more than once. You'll do it again.
Make a pogo pin board. If you wanna be slack about it, use some veroboard for a pogo board. But I strongly recommend getting a proper PCB made for your pogo board.
I did the maths on this stuff a while ago; if you have to program more than 2 boards, EVER, it's worth making a pogo pin board. It will save you time & frustration. And it doesn't have to be complicated; I just grabbed an arduino, made a really basic shield with the standard headers and the pogo pins, and soldered it myself.
Don't think about it, just do it
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
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!
I did something similar for an old project, but instead of pads I used .7mm holes. No need for a connector, but it acts as a connector because it's just big enough for a jumper wire to go through with friction and make good contact
I flash my boards also by just holding the pins against the bootloader pins. The difference is that mine have a male pin header, so it is easy to push against and even wedge it on something.
I do PCB design professionally. What we do is set all test pads on 0.100" centers. That way se can just solder some pogo pins into a standard sheet of perf board to make a programming/test jig.
Most assembly houses will take free-issued parts so you could provide them with the bootloader chip and have the assembler fit them.
just get a small 3x1 piece of 2.54 header, and bend pins if necessary
- 3 thru holes instead of pads
- magnetic pad connector like smart watch chargers
Two words: voice commands. Home assistant with voice assist and then you can tell it to turn on stuff, start flashing, reset, etc.
i think every electrical engineer has done that throughout at least one project...
You can use through holes for pin headers. If they are a little too small, the pin headers will jam in them and make good contact.
I design boards in EasyEDA and it generates pick and place files in like 1 click. I don't even own a hot air work station or a hot plate or anything, have never assembled SMD components onto a board myself other than for quick fix problems. One of the products I sell does require programming and the engineer who worked on it made a bed of nails jig with a toggle clamp to hold it onto pogo pins and its a lifesaver, its like a 15 second process to program and test one and then move on to the next
What you are looking for is "pogo pin connector".
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.
Spider holders that are used for microSD card recovery might be convenient (for other things too). Or something like a DuPont 1x3 male connector with *circumsized* ends, to hold it conveniently
Tag-connect is a must. Can get multiple pin configs as well. Wouldn’t use anything else.
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.
i say this with respect...its incredible to me that we have gone from a room of boxes in apolo to a guy in his room...and better then the old on top of that