Recent Posts

• August 12, 2008

  Successful Assembly!

  I finally tracked down some sticky issues with the PCB prototype of my Ifos project. Until now, I had assumed hardware problems accounted for its non-function.In a way, that was true, but in another more important way, it was software. I made some...

• August 10, 2008

  Circle Packing and Fiber Stuffing

  Now that the Ifos project is nearing completion—at least, the device itself is almost ready for actual live testing in an actual live installation—a practical question has come up.I’m beginning to wonder just how many stars will ...

• August 03, 2008

  Debugging SPI

  Compare the same SPI command sent from two PICs, one on the breadboard prototype of my Ifos project and one on the PCB-based version:Breadboard version (works) Printed circuit board version (doesn't work) What gives? There’s a clear sine wav...

• July 24, 2008

  ICSP Circuit Changes

  As I suspected, the in-circuit serial programming problem I was having with the new Ifos prototypes was due to a lack of isolation between the ICSP interface and the rest of the Ifos circuit.Not sure how the breadboard prototypes work in spite of ...

• July 22, 2008

  Ifos Assembly Attempt #2

  I just started building the second Ifos prototype from scratch, and already I’ve discovered an issue that problably contributed to the DOA-ness of assembly attempt #1.It turns out the land pattern for the voltage regulator’s heatsink d...