USB Interruptor

March 18, 2017March 8, 2017 fustinihackaday.io, testing, usbLeave a comment

Teensy creator Paul Stoffregen designed this board to momentarily disconnect a USB device:

USB Interruptor

This simple board plugs inline with a USB cable. It always passes the 5V power and normally passes the USB data signals. But when you press the button, the USB data signals are momentarily disconnected.

For the last few months I’ve been developing a USB Host Library for powerful but complex EHCI USB port in Teensy 3.6 [..] Reaching over to physically unplug the USB cable gets old quickly! Really, really old, both hands off my keyboard… right when trying to focus [..] I made this handy little board with a proper USB 2.0 high speed mux chip. The control signal is just 3.3V logic, so I might even wire it up to something to automate the process.

PaulStoffregen has shared the board on OSH Park:

USB Interruptor

Hackaday: Jump into Pogo

February 2, 2017January 27, 2017 fustinihackaday, test jig, testingLeave a comment

A lot of modern PCBs have small pads with no components attached. They are often used as test points, JTAG ports, or programmer connections. There’s no connector on the board, just pads. To use those, test equipment and programmers utilize pogo pins. These are small pins with a spring inside, reminiscent of a tiny pogo…

via Jump into Pogo — Hackaday

OpenFixture Takes the Pain Out of Pogo Pins

October 24, 2016October 24, 2016 fustinihackday, kicad, manufacturing, OpenSCAD, testingLeave a comment

Hackaday reports:

OpenFixture Takes the Pain Out of Pogo Pins

[Elliot] wrote in with his OpenFixture model for OpenSCAD. It’s awesome because it takes a small problem, that nonetheless could consume an entire day, and solves it neatly. And that problem is making jigs to test assembled electrical products: a PCB test fixture.

In the PCB design software, you simply note down the locations of the test points and feed these into the OpenSCAD model. [Elliot] shows you exactly how to do it using KiCAD. There are a few more parameters of the model that you can tweak to match your particulars, but you should have a DXF outline for a test jig in short order. Cut that out, assemble, and test.