johnand

Calum,

I am ok with the surface mount, but to make things as easy as possible for everyone, through hole would be best, but any way you like works for me

Calum

Well, the difference is about $15 or so to keep it through hole. Not a big deal unless you wanted to do production, so through hole it is.

johnand

Calum,

I see. I change my mind then I rather have surface mount and save the $15/ea. I have been trying to work with Matt to get these available for the forum store, so the cheaper the better, as I can do surface mount no problem

NewKleer

i doubt the majority of people would be capable of soldering surface mount successfully with their current hardware (hence $15 more would be better than forking out $50 for decent surface mount soldering iron?). after making my own diy kit, i know for most people, thru-hole is enough trouble.

alternative would be to pre-solder the surface mount component so people wouldnt have to do it themselves.

Calum

I can do two versions, its not a big deal.

The through-hole will be based on the ever popular dlp-usb232m board, available from mouser for $25 in small quantities:



The smt will be based on slilcon labs cp2102, which in small quantities is $4.53, also from mouser.

NewKleer

see if you could fit all the smt stuff under the dip28/32 outline (since its raised), then you could have either on the same board? how many supporting components does the smt cp2102 need?

RobertspecV

Let me know when you do the SMD versions, I'd like to have one.

If you want someone to do the parts buy, I can probably do it. I learned my lessons on the last batch.

Good to see that there are other people picking up the slack & ordering more boards.

I just wish we could get the Atek cables cheaper.

johnand

Calum, Will any of those fit in the metal box you have spec'd out?

johnand

I have a bunch of boards available. If anyone is interested, PM me.

RobertspecV

what's your email? I used up all mine and sometimes people email me for them. It will be good to have someone to point them to.

johnand

john@johnandtracey.com

NewKleer

have you made any progress with this?

i got myself some of the new FT232RL ssop28 chips, which are integrated solution (similar to cp2102) but able to be hand soldered (with difficulty ) however, while loopback works (hooking up tx to rx) i cant seem to get it to reliably read from the consult transmitter. it may be due to my circuit, but the circuit has had no issues at all with a max232 and a microcontroller reading from the same point.

what i get is its able to read it generally ok, but maybe 20% of the data comes back all garbled (eg just streaming 5A 00, ill get say FF 01 00 about 10 times, then ill get it dropping a byte, or getting the value of the byte wrong, and then eventually it goes back to normal, then does it again.

at this stage the only thing i can think of doing to get it to work is to use 2 max232's between it (rather than being able to omit those). would these chips be expecting something different on their receiver pins, something different to the max232 or a microcontroller? ive followed their sample circuits and doubt ive hooked it up wrong at all.

NewKleer

just checked tonight, it works fine having ecu->max232->max232->ft232rl