high voltage power tests

First initial power test is done now without having any of the low voltage components on the board for safety reasons. All 12 outlet points work as it should be without any high voltage leaks through the board raster layer. The raster layer is used to better conduct the heat dissipation on the board when having high current loads on the triacs. It also gives a special effect to the surface outer view of course. The triac trigger was manually provided by means of a 3V dc voltage - (through a current limiting resistor on the pcb) - connected to the optocoupler.

Test labo :

As we provided 12 small lamps (40W) for our test here so we will also introduce 12 mini buttons to connect the input connectors. We need these buttons to complete our integration test. Now we can safely continue in putting the cortexes and others low voltage components on the board. When that is ready the first integration tests can be done using my code described in my previous blog.

The shining continues !

sequel adding components on pcb

Now we added the triacs making the power sections complete. Also the opto coupling is already on board as you can see:

Meanwhile I wrote some test code to perform some basic testing. So it will be easy to see if everything lines up with the initial drawings as it should be. This will be used whenever the cortexes are present on the board. I wrote a separte topic in my cortex blog to highlight these tests. So refer to following link if you want to read more :

http://guyvo-cortex.blogspot.com/

(topic integration tests )

Still to come to the board:

• cortexes
• leds
• JTAG
• ADC circuit

soldering is started

Components are all arrived now so in the next coming weeks they will be proper placed on the pcb. Of course a couple of basic board integration tests must be made in parallel with this process. Like testing the inputs and outputs end to end. The two identical pcbs will be ready till end of august maybe a bit sooner. As soon they are ready I can start to port may proof of concept code build for the olimex development kit towards these final cortexes. This will be covered in detail in my cortex blog.

A first shot of the fuses , coils and connectors:

Stay tuned to follow the progress in next blogs.