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A project log for PicSniffer

Xilinx ZYNQ based HDMI input video processor (for Ambilight substitution)

marsupilamiMarsupilami 12/18/2014 at 19:270 Comments

Well, not really. This sucks.

First I realized that I made a very very ameteur mistake by last minute editing the outgoing gerbers manually. Wanted to spare a couple of hours -> connected power and gnd plane... congratulations.

Never ever, again.

I had to mill out the plating from the slots of the DC power receptacle. The short is gone, but now I have to live with some wires soldered to the board as a power input. Luckily I have these large test-point pads all over and I also had a nice pair of VCC IN and GND where I could connect the wires at least.

The next thing was the psu. Do you see the components marked as U2,U3,U4. Those are TI LMZ10501s which is a 1A rated buck switching regulator with integrated inductor. 0603 components and 0.1" header for scale! Yes, that thing is small, and btw is super awesome, but it has 8 flat leads + 1 big pad beneath. It took me like 10 runs with the rework station and a whole day to have all three soldered correctly.

Plus I gave up my view on lets not mix things what should not be mixed and I started to use leaded solder because the Pb free gave me more headache than I was willing to tolerate. (PCB has lead-free HASL beacause that was a lot cheaper than leaded and I wanted some solder on the pads in hope of not needing paste for the BGA. Otherwise I would've went for ENIG.)

Tomorrow: BGA yeeeah. I'm a bit sceptical about success at first trial. If by some miracle I manage to put that up properly, I'm done with the hardest part. The rest is hand-solderable and should couse no serious problem. Fingers crossed.

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