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Soldering headers to PyBoard.

A project log for Cheap underwater tilt current sensor.

Cheap (<$100) underwater current sensor that can be deployed at 70ft depth. Your thoughts, comments and advice are very welcome here!

max-kviatkouskiMax Kviatkouski 05/19/2018 at 06:100 Comments

Today I got package with female headers and wires for PyBoard. My thought was that they will make it easier to connect and disconnect main and backup batteries. Now I think I probably didn't really need them. However, I've soldered them already so will keep them. Just a few takes from this exercise for those who might need to install headers on their PyBoard:

- Header pin set doesn't include headers for backup battery slots. I had to just solder wires there. I might think that you can just snap two headers off. The problem is that backup battery sockets are a bit closer to each other than regular sockets + there is some resistor that doesn't allow good fit for headers.

- If you're new to soldering like I am, few tips:

I managed to solder all headers and the board is still working. So it was a good exercise. Picture of the board with headers:

On the picture below you can see close up of soldered joints. One in focus is not really good - that's one that I messed up initially by trying to apply solder with burned out flux (kept solder on the tip for too long). And I couldn't make it really nice afterwards. Those nicer joints around are those that I got first time right.

On the software side my next step is to experimentally proof that accelerator value is linearly proportional to cosine of tilt angle. I'm going to make small stand with protractor to make measurements. Now I'm writing some Python scripts that will allow me to observe "live" values from accelerometer on my laptop while I'm tilting the board.

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