The SWAMP05 boards and parts came in and I started soldering them up last night. That monster connector is a real bear to solder by hand, even with the right tools. In its unsoldered state it is very fragile. I managed to get two pins bent which of course then wouldn't solder properly with the hot air approach. I had to solder them with an iron under a microscope. Even a fine tip looks like a telephone pole coming in to solder this little tiny pin. I finally got it soldered in properly. The rest is a piece of cake!
Hopefully by this weekend it will be up and running and we can start working on the software for it. I'm finalizing what's going on Gen1, there are connectors on the top and bottom of the board. The description will be from the left looking at the board edge (which will be the back of the product). The XLR jacks and RCA jacks are staggered so their pins don't hit each other, the rest have connectors on top and bottom alligned. Each line will indicate a horizontal position, with possible top and bottom connectors. As you go down the list you are going scross the back panel tothe right. An NC means no connector >From the extreme left: top NC, bottom 3.5mm headphone jack. top XLR jack, bottom RCA jack. top XLR jack, bottom RCA jack. top BNC jack, bottom TOSLINK. top 2 USB type A stacked, bottom NC top micro USB OTG, bottom HDMI jack top Ethernet RJ45, bottom NC top power jack barrel type, bottom micro USB as power jack The wifi antenna jack is not on the board, it is a pigtail with connector that screws into a hole on the back panel. It has to be on the top of the board, anywhere we can find room for the hole. Probably above the micro OTG. There will be a power LED somewhere around the power jacks, haven't quite decided where yet. The two full size USB type A jacks are host ports, driven off a USB hub, so if you have a UAC1 async DAC, plug it into one of these two jacks and you won't need an external hub. Th OTG jack can be used as either a device or host port depending on which cable you use with it. We are looking at the possibility of using the OTG port in device mode as a USB DAC, using it this way is purely software so it doesn't add to the cost of the board. If you don't want to use it as a device the port can be used as a host port, so you would then have three host ports. The balanced outputs will take some software work to get running. Most likely this will NOT be ready when the Gen1 board is first released, so don't exepct to hook up the balanced outputs at first. (well you can hook them up, you will just get silence!) There is nothing on the front panel. IR receivers, IR blasters, relay boxes etc can all be added through USB. Doing the software controlled multi-colored LED turned out to be a nightmare so I'm not going to pursue it for this version. At this point I'm going to lock down this set of features and connectors and start working on the board layout. I will most likely add some headers on the board with an SPI and I2C and a couple GPIOs for people who really want to experiment, but these will not be guaranteed to be exactly the same on subsequent boards. They will not have external connectors. Use at your own risk etc etc. I am deliberately not putting an external UI on this board. It severly complicates things and will drastrically delay the completion date. I want to get this out as soon as we can and the only way to do that is to use external UI. The traditional SB control options will all work (server web UI, external programs on smart phones, tablets, laptops, desktops, the duet controler, an SBT etc.) There will be some form of HDMI output and IR input which can be used for control. There will be a builtin web server for configuration purposes. The internal hardware supports all kinds of input and display options, so over time we will most likely make versions that have internal UI, and my favorite, a boom replacement, but they will come at a later date. John S. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ JohnSwenson's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=5974 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=97881 _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
