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Oscilloscope Art at Hackaday Supercon 8

A couple of weeks before the event I traveled to the HaD Design Center to help setup the project. This is documenting what transpired.

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My chipKIT oscilloscope plotter project was selected for display at HaD Supercon 8

Recently I've been using Pi Pico W for my class so what is being displayed at Supercon is using a Pi Pico W + MCP4902 8-Bit DAC

On Oct 18th (14 days before the event) I traveled to the HaD Design Center to help setup the project for the event. This is documenting what transpired.

Upon arrival it was impossible to miss the other volunteers assembling the 500+ badges for S8. I immediately noticed that the badge uses the Pi Pico W as well and is setup to do nothing until hacked. I noted that all that was needed to turn the badge into an o-scope display was to add a DAC. I left that day with the goal of making 500+ cheap PCB's that could be easily populated with the MCP4902 so that anyone that is attending can make their own Oscillisope Art.

Source at https://github.com/JacobChrist/HackadayS8-OscilliscopeArt

WARNING (False Alarm): 

In retrospect it seems that there are no errors in the board design.  However, depending on how you are using the board it ma be better to populate the SIP headers one or both of the sip headers on the opposite side of the board than the silkscreen/legend.

I'M WORKING ON UPDATED PICTURES SHOWING HOW TO BUILD THE BOARD

Some notes from markusthegeek:

Be sure to use the Earle Philhower library for the Pi Pico with the Arduino IDE.  You must press the boot button when powering the board to program it the first time when using the Arduino IDE.

When you clone use the repo use the "sip-header-code" branch if you want to use it with the S8 Hackaday Badge.

OscilliscopArt.pdf

Adobe Portable Document Format - 71.13 kB - 11/01/2024 at 21:35

Preview

  • 2 × J1,J2, Digikey P/N 2057-PH1-09-UA-ND (SIP HEADER)
  • 1 × U1, Digikey P/N MCP4902-E/P-ND (DAC)
  • 1 × PCBA, Hackaday 2024 Supercon 8 Badge or a Pi Pico (W)
  • 1 × Digikey P/N 2057-RS1-09-G-ND
  • 1 × Digikey P/N: 609-91601-309LF-ND (SMT SIP HEADER FOR BADGE)

View all 6 components

  • Assembly and Test at Supercon

    Jacob Christ11/06/2024 at 18:44 0 comments

    I was able to assemble and test the board at Supercon (for the first time).  For a short period of time someone thought that they found an error in the SAO connector pinout but it seems that the issue was unfounded.  While at Supercon I handed out boards to anyone that would take them and I still have hundreds left.  The Oscilliscope art breadboard was also replaced with an actual S8 badge on Saturday morning and the original breadboard version was left on display next to the board.

  • Components Arrive

    Jacob Christ10/28/2024 at 21:20 0 comments

    Last week parts to assemble 50 boards arrived from Digikey.  But today, four days until Supercon 500 SOA Connectors and 500 PCB's arrived, both ahead of schedule. Thanks China Inc.

    I will bring all these to Supercon, 50 people will be able to build and test the board at the event and anyone interested in building one later can purchase their own parts from Digikey.

View all 2 project logs

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Discussions

Todd wrote 6 days ago point

I bought some MCP4902's, but I'm a bit confused on this update:

> In retrospect it seems that there are no errors in the board design.  However, depending on how you are using the board it ma be better to populate the SIP headers one or both of the sip headers on the opposite side of the board than the silkscreen/legend.

For the SIP headers, both sides of the board have silkscreen, so what is the opposite side? Also, I would have expected the male DIP header to be on the opposite side of the chip side (like most SAOs have).

Also, an image shows the SAO on the underside of the badge, which is unexpected.

Can you clear this up? Thanks.

  Are you sure? yes | no

Jacob Christ wrote 5 days ago point

1. During Supercon 8 someone reported a error in the design to me.  I took there work for it and added comment on this page saying there was an error.  However, once I fully tested the board no error was found.

2. This board has a SAO header, but there is only power and ground on this connection.  Its not needed at all, but it was suggested that I ad it so that it could be stored on the front of the board.  The MCP4902 DAC uses SPI.  For this reason if you want to run it off of the Supercon 8 badge it needs to be plugged into the SIP on the bottom (back) of the badge.   The alternative is to use a Pi Pico W in a breadboard.  In this case you would just run jumper wires to the Pi Pico W.

3. Regarding the SIP headers.  The picture connected to the badge is how I would populate the headers for use with the badge.  If I was going to use the board with a bread board I would probably flip the side of both SIP headers (so that the headers that go down into the breadboard are not on the same side as the MCP 4902.  If you were going to build this on a breadboard I wouldn't populate the SAO header at all.

At some point in the near future (Feburary 2025) I plan on making a video on how to use the board with a Pi Pico W and a breadboard.

  Are you sure? yes | no

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