New Driver: PD68 "DoubleDown" - 17/20/22mm FET+4

Not that I know anything about it, but…

The only thing that looks to me like it might make the board unusable would be the ground ring. If you can confirm that the ground ring does make contact in your light host, the rest of the board should be functionally okay, though a bit ugly.

All of the pads looks like they have been shifted over to the right

Thanks for taking a look and for your feedback, guys. Checked with DMM, no shorts so far. Seems shifted indeed, now that you say it, pyro.

And of course thanks to you PD, for making and sharing these boards. Hope you’ll get a nice firmware for your TripleDown, so many possibilities to use that board.

EDIT: By the way, now when I have these boards in front of me thinking about how to flash, adjust firmware and reflash, and adjust firmware and reflash them… it totally makes sense having an additional LED+ pad. Will use that and move the LED+ wire to the spring at the end.

Looking at it more, as David said the ground ring could cause a problem, and I’m not sure what would happen if Pin1 (the dot) is shorted to ground. It looks close.

I would suggest soldering both your power supply/battery connection to the Batt+ spring pad for testing. Otherwise you will probably have to un-solder the LED+ wire every time you want to reflash. There usually isn’t enough space for the SOIC8 clip to fit with the wire there.

I think I’ll pick the best looking one of the three I got and give it a try - carefully handsoldering. Will finish some other stuff first, but will keep you updated. Thanks

check continuity between Pin1 and gnd, there shouldn’t be any. I’m not positive, but I think there might be a chance of ‘bricking’ your attiny if there is. (maybe someone else can confirm yea/nay?) Pin1 is the Reset pin.

Just checked it, no continuity there. Thanks PD.

Copper is pretty far from the edge. Copper not drawn past edge of board? It looks almost as if the milling line were drawn and the copper just drawn to the inner edge of the milling line but sometimes fabs don’t come out quite as intended.

Oshpark doesn’t like copper right up to the board edge. They have often moved it back from the edge on my boards. And I use very thin milling lines, 0.01-0.03mm, with my ground copper beyond the board edge. Their official specs say “at least 15 mil clearances from traces to the edge of the board”.

So do you guys think I should contact OSH Park and tell them about these issues?

The lack of a ground ring on the left side is a combination of two issues. 1) Oshpark does not support copper right up to the edge of the board. Must be 15 mil clearance from the edge of the board. If you try to go right up to the edge with your ground ring, they will cut it back. So this part is not error on oshpark’s side.
2) The soldermask is shifted more than usual for oshpark. This might be a legitimate defect on the fab’s part. Oshpark’s specs say “Maximum soldermask expansion, retraction, or shift is 3mil.”

There might an issue with the plating but I can’t really see it in that picture. Maybe it’s just scuffed up from mailing? I’ve had scuffs of the gold plating on some of my boards.

Personally, I’d try one of the boards, if I could reflow it ok without shorts due to the shifted soldermask then I wouldn’t bother asking for a replacement.

If you are using a retaining ring (or soldering to a pill), you will have plenty of ground contact on the back side, but I personally would contact Oshpark because they are so easy to work with, and also I’m interested if they would comment on why they think it happened (maybe I can change a way I do something?).

Has anyone else bought any of these boards? If it was something pilotdog68 did, or failed to do, they should all show up like this, right? Would be interesting to know.

They look fine. I am hoping to get a 22 built this weekend, if time allows.

I’ve managed to build a working driver. Running bistro on it. Very very nice. Thank you Pilotdog!

Sweet!

Made some minor adjustments to bistro to best suit my likings so far and I must say: what an awesome firmware she wrote!

You did a hell of a job with that driver board as well.

This is probably a dumb question, but what is pin3 being used for these days?

On this board? Not really anything. The TripleDown uses it for an output.

All of my SOD323 diodes say 47 on the top with no line on either end. I am assuming that the 4 would be on the side away from the line drawn on the 22mm driver? The anode on the diode is to the left of the label on the diode if held in normal reading position.

Diode datasheet.

I have not built the 22mm version of this driver until now.

It is going to get Bistro on a tiny25! :slight_smile:

Thanks Matt