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PCBs and soldering

A project log for OSUG: Open-Source Underwater Glider

A versatile autonomous environmental drone using a buoyancy engine

alexwalexw 05/30/2017 at 22:070 Comments

I received the boards a few days ago and as I had already purchased the surface mount components, I was able to produce a partially assembled board relatively quickly.

I soldered the surface mount components using my trusty hot plate, which seemed to do a good job on the 0.45mm pitch atmega QFN package. The power regulator, resistor and headers were hand soldered. The resistor is due to a design error using an incorrect resistor package size and will be corrected for the next board revision.

The board pictured does not have the IMU soldered on as I wanted to test the microprocessor first (flash firmware and simple stepper motor control), as the IMUs are relatively expensive (~£6 for 1). Once I have validated the microcontroller circuit, I will assemble another board with all the components.

This is what the board looks like with the three stepper motor drivers attached:

The next step is flashing the atmega and porting over the control software and making the glider standalone. I also plan on publishing an update concerning water sealing soon.

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