Afternoon,
I'm new, please be kind
I've been soldering for many years and I'm relatively competent at it. I used to modify guitar pedals as a kid and have repaired all kinds of PCB-based electronics, so when this little project came about, I figured how hard could it be
... Okay, maybe I underestimated the challenge here, so I'm hoping with some advice I might be able to make progress.
There was a company selling PCB kits for a Guitar to Midi converter. I um'd and ar'd for a week too long, they sold the last kit and I was informed they had no more kits coming and had no plans to do another run
https://datapoint.uk/midi-boards/guitar-to-midi-converter/
What they did have was the remaining components from one kit, but no PCB and offered them me at a discount. So I took a punt and ordered 20 single layer Perfboards from Aliexpress. https://www.aliexpress.com/item/100...19296979__pc__pcBridgePPC__xxxxxx__1655471141
Following this schematic (inverted as it's single layer), I crack on:
https://datapoint.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Guitar-to-MIDI-PCB-1.png
So, day 1, and I'm flying through. I'm making a few little tweaks here and there as I didn't really start with any layout or ordering. I was just dropping components on the board. Basically, I went top left across and down.... 5 or so hours later and the whole thing is looking very complicated, but I figured how bad could it be? Today.... I went back and I just couldn't reconcile the board the schematic. I had clearly over-complicated it by my lack of planning. I guess either I need to follow it faithfully or create schematic altogether.. After an hour of trying, I realized (as an experienced software engineer) that if I'm having to reverse engineer something less than a day after I created it, then it's far too complicated.
Above is about 30 seconds into desoldering. I don't think I've damaged any of the components desoldering, so fingers crossed I'm good to try again.
How would you go about a second attempt? I've been Googling and there's suggestions about drawing the PCB on the perfboard so I at least have something to follow. One thing I tried to do was not cut the legs off the components as I figured I might have to start again, would I be better doing something like soldering magnet wire for tracks and then dropping the components in that way? The device runs on 9v, so would magnet wire even carry enough current.
Is there a sensible way to attach the boards? As you can see above, I glued them for my first attempt. The glue eventually failed, no surprise. I could screw them together but my concern around this is that it'll reduce the space i have to work with, but it'll at least hold them firm.
Anyway, any help you can provide would be amazing. Thanks in advance.
I'm new, please be kind
I've been soldering for many years and I'm relatively competent at it. I used to modify guitar pedals as a kid and have repaired all kinds of PCB-based electronics, so when this little project came about, I figured how hard could it be
... Okay, maybe I underestimated the challenge here, so I'm hoping with some advice I might be able to make progress.
There was a company selling PCB kits for a Guitar to Midi converter. I um'd and ar'd for a week too long, they sold the last kit and I was informed they had no more kits coming and had no plans to do another run
https://datapoint.uk/midi-boards/guitar-to-midi-converter/
What they did have was the remaining components from one kit, but no PCB and offered them me at a discount. So I took a punt and ordered 20 single layer Perfboards from Aliexpress. https://www.aliexpress.com/item/100...19296979__pc__pcBridgePPC__xxxxxx__1655471141
Following this schematic (inverted as it's single layer), I crack on:
https://datapoint.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Guitar-to-MIDI-PCB-1.png
So, day 1, and I'm flying through. I'm making a few little tweaks here and there as I didn't really start with any layout or ordering. I was just dropping components on the board. Basically, I went top left across and down.... 5 or so hours later and the whole thing is looking very complicated, but I figured how bad could it be? Today.... I went back and I just couldn't reconcile the board the schematic. I had clearly over-complicated it by my lack of planning. I guess either I need to follow it faithfully or create schematic altogether.. After an hour of trying, I realized (as an experienced software engineer) that if I'm having to reverse engineer something less than a day after I created it, then it's far too complicated.
Above is about 30 seconds into desoldering. I don't think I've damaged any of the components desoldering, so fingers crossed I'm good to try again.
How would you go about a second attempt? I've been Googling and there's suggestions about drawing the PCB on the perfboard so I at least have something to follow. One thing I tried to do was not cut the legs off the components as I figured I might have to start again, would I be better doing something like soldering magnet wire for tracks and then dropping the components in that way? The device runs on 9v, so would magnet wire even carry enough current.
Is there a sensible way to attach the boards? As you can see above, I glued them for my first attempt. The glue eventually failed, no surprise. I could screw them together but my concern around this is that it'll reduce the space i have to work with, but it'll at least hold them firm.
Anyway, any help you can provide would be amazing. Thanks in advance.