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Time to grow up?
Posted by Chris
on
Friday, April 17, 2009
After spending (wasting) hours and hours (not to mention sheet after sheet of copper board) making up PCBs, and giving myself a sore nose from breathing in the etching fumes (it's toxic apparently) I've managed to create about half a dozen half-etched boards. Not wanting them to go to waste, I have been practising soldering the tiny FT232RL (USB-to-serial) chips onto them I've discovered a few things:
Erm, that's it.
So despite having a few FT232RL chips left over (I burned a few out and made a mangled solder-mess of a few) I think it's probably best if I stick to DIP/SDIP packages. So that means either spending £8 on a breakout board each time I want to add USB support to a PIC project, or to forget about the whole USB-to-serial fudge and actually spend some time learning how to create native USB devices.
So it's time to "grow up" and use the stuff that the big boys are playing with....
- I'm rubbish at soldering
- USB-to-serial is an expensive alternative to true USB
Erm, that's it.
So despite having a few FT232RL chips left over (I burned a few out and made a mangled solder-mess of a few) I think it's probably best if I stick to DIP/SDIP packages. So that means either spending £8 on a breakout board each time I want to add USB support to a PIC project, or to forget about the whole USB-to-serial fudge and actually spend some time learning how to create native USB devices.
So it's time to "grow up" and use the stuff that the big boys are playing with....
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