News:

Forum may be experiencing issues.

Main Menu

New Projects Are Up!

Started by madbean, September 21, 2019, 03:07:06 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

madbean

The VFE Bumblebee, Harbinger 1.5, Man O' War and Man O' War DLX are now available. The Snarkdoodle giveaway is also in effect until I run out. The Polytrog has to be pushed back to Oct. due to a very stupid error I made on the PCB which will re-quire them to be re-run. Very sorry about that!


Stupid Polytrog story:

I verified my final prototype quite a while back. I discovered a minor error in how I had two diodes connected. No big deal, fixed that on the PCB and had them made. I decided I better build up a production board once I had them since it is such a complicated project and there were also a couple value changes I forgot to include in my prototype. So, I build the board, test it out. No dice. Not getting the right voltages off the charge pump. I think and think and think. Then I realize I drew the charge pump circuit wrong. When I built the prototype, I just powered it off 18v to start since I did not know what the final current draw was going to be. After I verified it I thought...well, I did not put the parts on for the charge pump so I better check that out. Rather than solder the parts on the PCB, I quickly breadboarded it and verified it worked with the total circuit. Big mistake (thinking I left nothing to chance...other than the possibility that I did the circuit wrong on the PCB). I've drawn that charge pump hundreds of times why would I make a mistake?

Goes to show - never leave even the smallest detail to chance when you are designing PCBs.

jjjimi84

Order in! So pumped for the bumblebee, thank you.

Doorlord

ordered my Harbinger.
Not sure when I'm gonna get to build it though, as I'm currently emptying my garage/shop for a 3 month construction project. Adding a room and moving the garage door to another wall, which will require a new garage slab so the water & beer will drain out instead of in. Demolition starts Monday AM.


dawson

Heroically high standards to call this a "stupid" mistake.
Criticism is encouraged: constructive, or otherwise.

oip

nice!  harbinger ordered.  looking forward to this one.

Axldeziak

You could blow out the Polytrog boards you already have as unsupported seconds, (or as a giveaway) and let the builder worry about the 18V source.
It would be a way to get some use out of them without the pile becoming landfill.

jimilee

Maaaaaannnn


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Pedal building is like the opposite of sex.  All the fun stuff happens before you get in the box.

HamSandwich

Quote from: Axldeziak on September 22, 2019, 11:42:27 AM
You could blow out the Polytrog boards you already have as unsupported seconds, (or as a giveaway) and let the builder worry about the 18V source.
It would be a way to get some use out of them without the pile becoming landfill.

Agreed with this. Hell, if that's the only problem, I'd buy one at regular price!  :o

Berger


zgrav

No surprise to see that the Snarkdoodle boards are gone.  : ^)   

madbean

Quote from: zgrav on September 25, 2019, 06:44:07 PM
No surprise to see that the Snarkdoodle boards are gone.  : ^)

I actually have some more on the way.

zgrav

Mine is apprently in the mail, so no problem here.  But good to know that a few other folks won't be disappointed.