Recent content by z2amiller

The grumpy engineer in me says that this is an X-Y problem. :-). It would probably be better to find a way to fix the formulas on your spreadsheet rather than enumerating every possible component you'd need (which culminates in replicating the mouser/digikey catalog in a spreadsheet). For a...

I'm surprised you need to run this hot, especially if you're saying you can touch solder to directly to your iron and not have it melt until you have it up this high. I use lead-free exclusively (SAC305, melting point ~220C). I keep my soldering station set to 360C and it works great, within...

Are you sure the backs of your pots aren't shorting anything out? They look like they're uncovered/bare metal so when they're up against the board you're going to risk shorting things out. Have you tried adjusting the trimpots? I haven't built this specific chorus, but I have built a couple...

Depends on the components. For stuff like resistors and jellybean diodes, they just aren't worth the trouble. Especially for stuff that is like under 5 cents in qty 100 from mouser/digikey (e.g. you can get one resistor for 25 cents or 100 for $2). Pots, maybe - they're big and chonky and a...

Doublecheck the 2.2uF electrolytic capacitors in the middle of the board. The graphic on the landing page shows the silkscreen with the + facing south, but your caps are all installed with the - facing south. But -- the build doc says that all of the capacitors face the same direction with -...

It was a while ago that I set it up, but from what I remember it was really simple. I created a templates directory, then created a project in there like I would create any other project. Then you add a directory called 'meta' and put an "info.html" file in there just with the description...

Also, it's pretty easy to create user templates. (to use them you do File -> New Project From Template). I think you can have schematic as well as PCB templates. I only use the PCB templates. ( I have all of my offboard / power sections as 'Design Blocks' which have already been mentioned )...

In terms of tips and tricks, also take advantage of the 'Design Blocks' feature of the schema editor - get all of your inputs (9v, gnd, etc) laid out how you want, potentially including connectors. Also you can snapshot the common power supply design blocks (power filtering, vref, etc). I find...

The trimmit was born for this :-)

ooooh, or - the stripboard layout assumes C10 @ 33nF is one strip long, but you've got the wima in there that spans 2 strips.

Maybe here? Based on the schematic, if you've got something wrong when tone is cranked clockwise, it implicates C10/R15. If C10 is bridged it turns the RC high-pass filter into an R no-pass filter :-)

+1 to reflow, some cold joints. Ideally you should get some solder to flow through to the other side. (more flux helps this). Do you get any LED blinkage? If the sense LED isn't doing anything, the LFO isn't doing the thing. Did you play with the bias trim at all? I don't remember if it's...

Yeah the build doc has the schematic and that's right, it's straight to ground. Kind of surprising to make the ground protection be a dead short. Most of the time when you design a circuit like that, you want to add a (poly)fuse that would trip. Glad to hear your build is working, it looks neat!

I might try adding some additional capacitors to see if additional filtering helps. You can tack these on to the back side of the PCB using the same pins for testing things out. This probably the order I would try things: - Add a 100nF capacitor in parallel to the input cap, ceramic if you...

What do you measure for voltages on the 556 when it's plugged in? Looks like pin 14 (top right) should measure 9V and pin 7 (bottom left) is ground. Also it looks like the reverse polarity protection in this circuit just creates a short circuit between +9/GND if it's reversed, so I imagine that...