#496

It is possible that is meant to be used with a blowtorch. I think you will get on much better with some thin solder designed for soldering irons. (Do not use a blowtorch on a PCB.)

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#497

Has anybody used this successfully with a rpi 3B (not the +)? I’v got one lying around and was wondering if I could use that istead of getting a new 3B+, which seems a bit hard to find right now.

#498

Yup should be fine. I did that initially. There is some site upthread that has loads of 3b+ stock.

#499

(the wifi issue has been fixed in the meantime)

#500

RS Components in the UK has just had a restock of RPi 3B+s.

#501

Hahahahaha lmao
nope I will save that for plumbing issues and occasional camp fires
Thanks

1 Like
#502

thanks!

Thanks for the heads up!

#504

though just because I am cuorious. what’s the big advantage of the 3B+ over the 3B for norns?
As far as I can see they did upgrade a few things, but not sure how they impact the performance of the norns code.

#505

@papernoise Hi, here, by the way :slight_smile:

1 Like
#506

I know this isn’t that kind of forum, but this is a signature-worthy quote if I ever saw one.

4 Likes
#508

No luck :frowning: the day it died, i took it to my class to show students (in a soft case) and brought it home and thats when it had troubles. Is the shield and screen that sensitive too?

#510

41 posts were merged into an existing topic: Norns shield case designs

#511

Just a heads up to let you all know about a mistake I just made so you don’t go through the same thing! I got a nice set of brass spacers online that was recommended for raspberry pis. Took a bit of juggling with parts to get the right combination of spacers, nuts and screws, and I had to drill out the two holes on the shield to fit the 2.5mm screws, but managed to get everything perfect both with the shield and the pi, and the shield and the screen. Was very pleased with myself!

Then my norns wouldn’t boot. (Just the red light.) Resoldered everything and still not joy. Did continuity testing, looked good. Still not booting. Reflashed the SD card. Still dead.

As a last attempt, I took all my spacers out and it booted again fine! I think the spacers between the screen and the shield were shorting something perhaps.

So, I’m going to get some nylon spacers next. Lesson is: avoid electrically conducting spacers folks!

1 Like
#512

or… maybe they’re absolutely fine, as my metal-spaced norns pictured above proves? There’s perhaps a different lesson to be learned:

…don’t drill holes in a PCB? By doing so you’ll have revealed the ground plane - it doesn’t look like there are any traces near the M2 holes for the screen (unlike the M2.5 holes everywhere else), but if you then bridge the ground plane with something conductive to another trace - on any board - that might not be the one you expect, then yes, things will likely stop working.

Doesn’t take much surface area for a bridge to form, but I would never, ever recommend just blindly expanding holes on a circuitboard. There are no traces near the M2 holes, so I’m presuming it’s a ground short.

(There are two holes for screen spacing that are M2, not M2.5, and should be populated as such.)

3 Likes
#513

I managed to get away with expanding one of the display holes with a round file. I won’t be trying that again, though.

#514

Also, for those who are interested, if the board is 4-layer (or more) there’s often a V+ plane and a ground plane as internal layers inside the board. These can also be shorted if you expose and inadvertently connect them.

2 Likes
#515

I’d be interested to now why the smaller size was chosen for these holes, given the corresponding holes on the display board are M2.5, I believe.

Could have been to do with limited space for screw heads on the top of the display carrier PCB, but could also have been a simple oversight, and they were intended to be larger.

#516

Yep, I wondered if that was perhaps the problem. No more drilling PCBs for me! Also, it’s definitely only the screen spacers that are the problem, which is why I thought maybe you hadn’t had the same issue on yours as you don’t seem to have spacers for the screen in the picture I saw. (Great trick with the acrylic over the whole screen by the way!) I did check that there weren’t any traces nearby before I did it but stupidly didn’t consider that bridging it to the ground on the display board might cause a problem. Doh.

Anyway, at least I know it’ll be fine with the nylon spacers I have arriving tomorrow. I’ll let you all know if the pack I’ve ordered has a combination of lengths for this project!

#517

Don’t use, unless you have to … this it will be such a headache. this is meant for soldering huge AC wires together.

get something like this, it’ll 100% be worth the $5
https://www.amazon.com/KESTER-SOLDER-83-7068-1402-Solder-Diameter/dp/B005194JDO/ref=sr_1_7?keywords=lead+free+solder&qid=1581615945&sr=8-7

1 Like
#521

I ended up using this set of nylon spacers, which worked a charm (I had already slightly foolishly widened the holes on the PCB for the screen, but it’s all working now!). The nice thing about these is that the nylon screws are small enough to fit beside the screen on the PCB, which for other screws seems like too tight a fit.

image
image1168×1280 321 KB

One other thing… I recommend using an official Raspberry Pi power supply. I had some that I really thought were good enough, but was getting dropouts when using more complex scripts. Using the official supply seems to have fixed that.

5 Likes