@@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.
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
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.
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 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.
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 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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Hey man just a feedback , I know this is a no effort november video , but as an enthusiat who is basically a layman on electronics I couldn't understeand like half of your explanation. Now as someone with adhd I get the need to try to explain every minute detail for people to reallyyyy understeand your pespective, but that made it kinda confusing for me. I feel like you need to either explain it bit by bit , or summarize it a lot to make the video more acessible ( but judgement here I love your videos and I know this is not effort november and you made this mostly to get it out of your head )
I have been using Tag-Connect TC2030 for years to program all kinds of boards. They are basically 6-pins cables with poggo pins on one end and a standard connector on the other. You will probably need to make a small adapter board to connect it to whatever programmer you are using, but then it is really easy to program each board. You can even get the holder clips for a few bucks, they will hold the cable in place while you are programming.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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!
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.
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.
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
I just ordered a 6 pin tag-connect cable for my stm32 boards. You use their footprint in your board design, and it includes holes for the cable to clip on while you do programming and debugging. Zero cost for the board (no headers).
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
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.
my first thought is a simple 3d print with holes for pogo pins properly spaced apart that registers/aligns on one corner of the pcb and a woodworking spring clamp to hold it on/down while it programs. but you know what, we all need a silly, frustrating process in our lives to keep us humble haha
I used to have the full blown Cortex 9pin JTAG connector designed into everything for this purpose. Lately because of space constraints I switched to the 6pin TagConnect. The cable is somewhat expensive but it does pay itself off. Also I don't know how much prototyping you do but flashing the application using the debugger is possible and it's faster.
As many here already suggested a POGO pin Adapter should be the fix. If you ever design a new board you could even include the foodprint for comercialy available POGO pin adapter like the TC2030-IDC-NL (or realisticaly the 3 pin alternative that you design for the existing board)
Just 3d print a jig to hold some pogo pins in the right orientation. Solder some wires to the bottom of the pogo pins and you’re done. Could obviously make this as complicated as you wanted to but you could get a crude bed of nails setup working in a few hours of CAD and 3d printing.
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.
Tape stiff wires together the right distance apart so you can hold them on with one hand, maybe even hold it there with that little holder thing. You can alligator clip onto the other end of the wire or something. It’s like 30 minutes of effort to make it a one handed job and get you at least a little more time back.
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.
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.
Personally, I’d 3d print a jig that the wires slide into that also spaces out the wires correctly. Easy one handed operation so you can apply enough pressure and have a hand free for other activities.
I bought one of those handheld pogo-pin connectors. Even less work than designing a jig, but you will need to change the pad layout. Minimal change to the workflow
Low efford solution, hot glue three pins together and then you can hold the 3 pins together in one hand. BOOM! Or you could go fancy and buy 3 spring-loaded contact pins and hot glue those together
If you dont want to design and 3D print a holder, Id try a "no effort" version: take a piece of cardboard and 3 metal paperclips. straighten out the paperclips, and punch them thru the cardboard at the correct spacings. Then wrap the wires around each of the paperclip leads. For each paperclip: One paperclip end touches the board at the correct location while the other end touches the wire.
For testing usually i solder jumper wires, i could just get the tips and crimp them but well its a no effort lifestyle, sort of xD, usually i use only 2 and its already hard with one hand, but with a bit of hot glue it could help keep them in place
I had this exact same dumb decesion I made on a few of my projects. Best solution that is a bit pricey for hobyist stuff ($100) would be a Sensepeek PCBite kit. It has a board holder and the probes rest themseves with gravity with these really sharp pins. It would be the best compromise you are looking for.
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.
You can 3d print a holder which would looks like E with right spacing and some flexibility and just glue wires to it. You still would have to hold it by the hand but at least you'd need one hand.
Pogo pins are the solution but I don’t know if there is enough space on the board, so you can put them in a little cradle to secure and align them with the available space, and solder the cable extensions in to the programming interface
Lowest effort: a blob of hot glue to hold the wires correctly spaced. Then you can hold the wires with one hand, and then your other hand is free for mousing.
Just spin up a board from pcbway with 3 holes for pogo pins. Then if you find yourself making more and more boards, 3d print a jig for it. So you can just push the board on top, squashing the pogo pins and then hit burn.. but for small qty. you can just hold the board on there.. will take like 10 mins to spin up a design and like $8 in parts.
probably get a foot pedal that you can macro to the mouse click or like the enter key or whatever. That seems like it's generally useful beyond just this particular silly thing. then maybe get some contacts or pogo pins soldered to prototyping board for at least the three hard to reach ones. it'll still be dumb but less frustrating.
Put header pins on the board and put sockets on the wires. You can get SMT header pins. Not sure if the board house can pick-and-place those, though. Anyway, too late for this board but you won't make this mistake again.
There are pogo pins which fit into standard female jumpers. So I most of the time just out all pads needed In a 100 mil grid and then take a 3*2 jumper, put the pogo pins ins and be happy. But the I press cables against PCB... Been there, done that. 😂
take a look at sensepeek PCBite probes. you already have a magnetic plate for the rest of your arms, so you don't even need to buy one of those. a set of four SP10 probes will set you back 60 bucks, but it's a fantastic investment. also, the necks are supposed to be that floppy. you'll notice...
not sure if this will work as you said the arm thingy doesnt put enough pressure: mark the spacing on a block of styrofoam, then poke it with a toothpick or something (start from pin-side so you dont have to hunt), maybe poke at an angle so the cable wont slip back when you press on the block.
This is the definition of technical debt. 3d printer a simple negative of the AVA, make a cutout for the 4 wires and and hotglue them in place. Place the AVA on the negative, press it down (or add a brick) use the same set up for the PC connection.
Homie had so little effort he couldn't even bother with getting this done during November. That's commitment right there 👌
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.
Would love more of this low effort behind the scenes stuff!
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
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.
personally I use my nose to press the mouse button in situations like this
that's what the foot pedals are for
3D printed "board shaped hole" fixture with some pogo-pins in the bottom.
Push board into hole, click go.
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
"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.
I was expecting a 3d-printed jig to hold the wires, but then I saw the blue tape. PROBLEM SOLVED.
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.
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
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”
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
Love these style of videos! Keep up the great work!
what is the pin spacing and do you have a PO Box
This is very blursed and I fully support it
I also fully support red AVAs
just get a small 3x1 piece of 2.54 header, and bend pins if necessary
You need yourself a bare-board programming connector. In a pinch, soicbite. If you're a little more serious, Tag-Connect.
Tag-Connect
I have done the same thing. I feel your pain.😂
Tagconnect. And then always use the same pinout
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.
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.
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.
In a similar situation I have jammed needles or paper clips through a piece of cork with the correct spacing.
Hey man just a feedback , I know this is a no effort november video , but as an enthusiat who is basically a layman on electronics I couldn't understeand like half of your explanation.
Now as someone with adhd I get the need to try to explain every minute detail for people to reallyyyy understeand your pespective, but that made it kinda confusing for me. I feel like you need to either explain it bit by bit , or summarize it a lot to make the video more acessible ( but judgement here I love your videos and I know this is not effort november and you made this mostly to get it out of your head )
I have been using Tag-Connect TC2030 for years to program all kinds of boards. They are basically 6-pins cables with poggo pins on one end and a standard connector on the other. You will probably need to make a small adapter board to connect it to whatever programmer you are using, but then it is really easy to program each board. You can even get the holder clips for a few bucks, they will hold the cable in place while you are programming.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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!
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.
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.
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.
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
I just ordered a 6 pin tag-connect cable for my stm32 boards. You use their footprint in your board design, and it includes holes for the cable to clip on while you do programming and debugging. Zero cost for the board (no headers).
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
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.
Tag Connect is what you need
my first thought is a simple 3d print with holes for pogo pins properly spaced apart that registers/aligns on one corner of the pcb and a woodworking spring clamp to hold it on/down while it programs. but you know what, we all need a silly, frustrating process in our lives to keep us humble haha
One of the magics of the brain. It will use anytime to do less effort.
this was helpful, since i now feel a little better for my different bad janky set ups
I used to have the full blown Cortex 9pin JTAG connector designed into everything for this purpose. Lately because of space constraints I switched to the 6pin TagConnect. The cable is somewhat expensive but it does pay itself off.
Also I don't know how much prototyping you do but flashing the application using the debugger is possible and it's faster.
As many here already suggested a POGO pin Adapter should be the fix. If you ever design a new board you could even include the foodprint for comercialy available POGO pin adapter like the TC2030-IDC-NL (or realisticaly the 3 pin alternative that you design for the existing board)
Slave a foot switch to the appropriate mouse button.
As they say, if it's stupid and it works, it's not stupid
Just 3d print a jig to hold some pogo pins in the right orientation. Solder some wires to the bottom of the pogo pins and you’re done.
Could obviously make this as complicated as you wanted to but you could get a crude bed of nails setup working in a few hours of CAD and 3d printing.
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.
Tape stiff wires together the right distance apart so you can hold them on with one hand, maybe even hold it there with that little holder thing. You can alligator clip onto the other end of the wire or something. It’s like 30 minutes of effort to make it a one handed job and get you at least a little more time back.
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.
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.
Personally, I’d 3d print a jig that the wires slide into that also spaces out the wires correctly. Easy one handed operation so you can apply enough pressure and have a hand free for other activities.
I bought one of those handheld pogo-pin connectors. Even less work than designing a jig, but you will need to change the pad layout. Minimal change to the workflow
"Bed of Nails" and "Pogo Pins" have entered the chat. Want to be fancy, get a singly key HID emulator and write a macro to it.
I summon Lady Ada!
Low efford solution, hot glue three pins together and then you can hold the 3 pins together in one hand. BOOM!
Or you could go fancy and buy 3 spring-loaded contact pins and hot glue those together
Everyone else saying it: Solder a couple of pogo pins and there you go.
If you dont want to design and 3D print a holder, Id try a "no effort" version: take a piece of cardboard and 3 metal paperclips. straighten out the paperclips, and punch them thru the cardboard at the correct spacings. Then wrap the wires around each of the paperclip leads. For each paperclip: One paperclip end touches the board at the correct location while the other end touches the wire.
It’s just November 31st
pins facing up stuck in erasers, placed in a cardboard cutout together with the board facing down
that's as much work as i am willing to handle
PCBite could put pressure on the pins 👍
But can you connect a simple wire to PCBite? 🤔
Yeah, Sensepeek PCBITE-4003 kit has simple wires.
close enough literallly good enough
For testing usually i solder jumper wires, i could just get the tips and crimp them but well its a no effort lifestyle, sort of xD, usually i use only 2 and its already hard with one hand, but with a bit of hot glue it could help keep them in place
10 minutes in CAD to design a jig that's a couple of pogo pins and some posts to line up the screw holes, then send it to the 3d printer.
That video reminded so much of XKCD 1205 (Is It Worth The Time?), for something u do yearly if u spend more than 2hrs to optimize it's worthless.
Pogo pins and a 3D printed jig are all you need!
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?
I had this exact same dumb decesion I made on a few of my projects. Best solution that is a bit pricey for hobyist stuff ($100) would be a Sensepeek PCBite kit. It has a board holder and the probes rest themseves with gravity with these really sharp pins. It would be the best compromise you are looking for.
Just bought one! Looks like the perfect happy medium here
Just use a tag connect
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.
Reason why I love pogo pins
They make a smd socket specifically for programming for the Atmel ICE programmer. That would speed up the process immensely
One of my first projects was a ATtiny85 bootloader. Good times and super easy.
That was delightful - so human
You can 3d print a holder which would looks like E with right spacing and some flexibility and just glue wires to it. You still would have to hold it by the hand but at least you'd need one hand.
Pogo pins are the solution but I don’t know if there is enough space on the board, so you can put them in a little cradle to secure and align them with the available space, and solder the cable extensions in to the programming interface
Lowest effort: a blob of hot glue to hold the wires correctly spaced. Then you can hold the wires with one hand, and then your other hand is free for mousing.
I would probably just lay out some pogo pins on a perf board and solder it all together. Seems like a 20min solution that saves 20 min the first use
Just one suggestion: Sensepeek's PCBite
Just spin up a board from pcbway with 3 holes for pogo pins. Then if you find yourself making more and more boards, 3d print a jig for it. So you can just push the board on top, squashing the pogo pins and then hit burn.. but for small qty. you can just hold the board on there.. will take like 10 mins to spin up a design and like $8 in parts.
Every time I see an AVA board i'll remember this video good job Joe
probably get a foot pedal that you can macro to the mouse click or like the enter key or whatever. That seems like it's generally useful beyond just this particular silly thing. then maybe get some contacts or pogo pins soldered to prototyping board for at least the three hard to reach ones. it'll still be dumb but less frustrating.
Put header pins on the board and put sockets on the wires. You can get SMT header pins. Not sure if the board house can pick-and-place those, though. Anyway, too late for this board but you won't make this mistake again.
There are pogo pins which fit into standard female jumpers. So I most of the time just out all pads needed In a 100 mil grid and then take a 3*2 jumper, put the pogo pins ins and be happy.
But the I press cables against PCB... Been there, done that. 😂
instead of having to spiritually be in the mindset of no effort November why don't you just switch to don't put any effort into anything December
Hellooo Joe Beee
What you use as rocket body ??
May 21, 1946, Louis Slotin, demon core
Voice commands. Disability options.
a little 3dp jig could probably hold them, or make pushing them on the board easier
take a look at sensepeek PCBite probes. you already have a magnetic plate for the rest of your arms, so you don't even need to buy one of those. a set of four SP10 probes will set you back 60 bucks, but it's a fantastic investment. also, the necks are supposed to be that floppy. you'll notice...
not sure if this will work as you said the arm thingy doesnt put enough pressure: mark the spacing on a block of styrofoam, then poke it with a toothpick or something (start from pin-side so you dont have to hunt), maybe poke at an angle so the cable wont slip back when you press on the block.
I use tape (scotch, electrical, duct), it just works
Yes, there are those kind of machines. Or you can still do the method that you use with solid tipped wires/Dupont cables.
This is the definition of technical debt.
3d printer a simple negative of the AVA, make a cutout for the 4 wires and and hotglue them in place. Place the AVA on the negative, press it down (or add a brick) use the same set up for the PC connection.