Robin Mitchell's Blog

It is great to see the PCBs that I produce finally show up in a project! This is a custom NeoPixel Driver designed by Calum Knott (http://calumk.com/). Here is what Calum had to say about the PCBs: "Robin at Mitch Electonics has been working hard on perfecting low-cost PCB's manufactured in...

I cant believe its been 5 years with MitchElectronics... All started because I made simple PCBs. Well, I have come along way now and have just achieved through hole plating! Thats right! And at the same time soldermasks! Its easy to plate or apply a mask but what is hard is consistantly doing...

The experiment was a success, at least I know it worked on holes down to 1mm. I dont know about smaller holes because I cant see inside them so therefore I will electrically test those soon. But the bigger holes had a nice layer of copper in them which is fantastic. TO proove that it was copper...

Third year at engineering, awesome girlfriend, new spanking website and possible through hole plating! My website has be redesigned with the help of my girlfriend who has been helping me with the wordings and style. Ok I lie, she pretty much did everything I just coded the darn thing. It...

Third year at engineering, awesome girlfriend, new spanking website and possible through hole plating! My website has be redesigned with the help of my girlfriend who has been helping me with the wordings and style. Ok I lie, she pretty much did everything I just coded the darn thing. It...

Its funny to think that when I started this little PCB gig I thought that I would continue to produce simple boards. Well after a year it looks like the only thing Im missing now is through hole plating. The solder mask experiment was a complete success and when I attempted to solder away the...

Its been a long time since I started testing. At least 6 months. The darn ink never worked :( I used the tube solder mask repair stuff with the very poor instructions and I was NOT getting anywhere. No matter what I tried, nothing. Until.....I saw a tub. A small black tub with strange looking...

I am currently building an executive toy that is a small 1970's style looking computer (with the exception of the 2 line 16 character display). The computer has 2K ROM, 8K RAM, hopefully a paper tape reader and several IO ports. Interestingly this computer is easy to adapt and therefore i...

Hey everyone, I know, im that bad! This is my FIFTH CPU design. This time, im keeping to kiss (keep it simple stupid). I have spent time designing this one internal bus four bit computer. It has a small number of instructions as listed below: Add(ab): Adds the two registers A and B together...

Hi everyone This is a much better version and it is to be the FINAL one. I should have done Z80 programming before making a program. Now i know EXACTLY what i need: THe computer is comming along nicely, 6 registers A to F and i have a good system to make it flexable: There are two bytes...

Hi everyone, I want this sram, and this one only! http://www.farnell.com/datasheets/63505.pdf Im having problems understanding the read and write cycles. Can someone out there just explain what needs to happe on each clock cycle. Why cant manufactuers have simplified documents :(

Hi everyone, me again! I have been designing a 4 bit hybrid computer as some users here allready know. Looking back at the old 4 bit computer, thank god i did not make it, it would have been a waste of components. It had no functionality, no usefulness, could not be used for proper programs...

Ok, its done! Allthough its missing a tape drive i cant be bothered at the very moment but i will design one for those who want to use my design. Notice that the instructions and decoding is hardwired! http://www.mediafire.com/?jjgdnwa0t3y This is a zip with all the schematics. The...

Ok the computer is really starting to take shape. So, the schematics for the ALU ARE DONE!!! and will upload them in a pdf. The accumulator is also done but the main processor...well....lets just say i needs to be checked first. If someone could check it for me the just send me a message by...

I have completly redesigned the ALU after discovering i need decoupling capacators and open collectors. I am using the Eagle software to draw the schematics and convert to PCB, man....I have never used such a brilliant program for auto-routing. This thing can route ANYTHING!!!

Well I have finished the ALU design and just need to implement this to a PCB. Instead of the traditional "everything on one board" I have designed mini boards that fit in a mini shelf (i mean really small). This way its easier to find a problem and fix.