BuriedCode

Mine arrived today! You shipped it Thursday, its now Saturday....thats <3 days from Germany to the UK (!!!) Not sure what method you used, but wow, it usually takes longer than that for packages from London to get to me. Safe to say, I'm impressed! I'll try not to spam the thread with glowing feedback, but its all good, and well worth the money. I haven't checked the forum for this, but if anyone is new to soldering the TQFP32 GM5 chip (at90USB162) and needs help/photo's on techniques, I would be happy to take some snaps as I solder it. Been soldering SMT for years with basic tools (including DFN, SSOP etc..). BuriedCode (yes, I made a spelling mistake when i signed up >.<) edit by nILS: I fixed it for you ;)

I've used cheap nail varnish remover (from the wife/gf) which is claimed to be 'non-acetone', and lighter fliud :) Both do the job, but require scrubbing with an old tooth brush,or some paper tower. Whatever you use, it'll stink, and possibly get you high if you're not in a well ventilated area. Btw, I use 'no clean' fluxed solder, which is a cop out, since its a bitch to clean.

When I'm stuck for common parts (such as HC logic) I just go to ebay :D The UK, US, canada, and of course 'china', have lots of electronics shops wher eyou can by one, ten, even batches of 100 of common logic in DIP or SMT for reasonable prices. Usually about 50% of what you would get from a company like mouser. But you're not guaranteed the quality/reliability as you are with a large electronics distributor, altohugh I haven't had any 'dead chips' yet.

:laugh: That made me chuckle, and its very accurate! Lots of misinformation is around about certain makes of capacitors for sales purposes, and again, nILS is spot on. Many different 'types' of capacitor which lend themselves to different applications, but that doesn't mean to say 'better' ones in your app will be more expensive. For the most part, in my experience, changing the types of caps in a circuit (same value, and working voltage) makes very little difference to signal 'quality'. The exception being where high gain amplifiers are used, as some capacitors can introduce more noise than others, but its so small it can only make an audiable difference when you're dealing with gains of 40dB+. For non polarised low value, metalised polyester are pretty good. For polarised, there won't be much difference, as many which are considered 'great' by audiophiles are low ESR aluminium, which have no place in audio - designed for efficient high current switched mode power supplies - providing large currents very quickly, not to carry an audio signal. I could be wrong! Since I'm not an audio guy really, just a techie. Buriedcide

Depends what you mean by 'first hand' :D It looks pretty much exactly how its designed to look, not 'great' in sunlight, but readable. And not 'superbright' in the dark, but again, readable. As you talking about STN LCD's? TFT's ? The newer TFT panels used in car navigation systems and mobile phones (usually <3.5" but sometimes larger for high-endlaptops) are 'micro-transflective' making them readable in full sunlight with the sacrifice of contrast and colour saturation. For the most part, in terms of the character/graphic TF LCD's I've used, they never seem to be very bright, even inthe dark, since the transflectice layer absorbs a lot of the backlight. But that is perfectly made up for in normal lighting conditions, where it doesn't 'wash out'. Also note (you probably know), LCD's aren't 'esmissive' per-se, emitting no light, only allowing it pass, thats why backlights are needed for transmissive/transflective. OLED's however, are, along with a fantastic contrast ratio (10000:1?), sunlight readable, but with limited operational life. Buriedcode.

As wilba said, they seem pretty rare, I certainly haven't seen any 'standard' off-the-shelve ones. Since the 'gap' between connections is considered metastability in electronics, and so, is discouraged in design/manufacturing for standard apps. I'm no expert on keyboard switching, but I have only ever seen be-spoke custom switches used, mostly membrane (as wilba said) and once a cheaper springed contact, with two 'wire's running above and below it for the toggles. There are microswitches which have a long lever, giving it a long travel, but they are 'click effect', as switch very quickly form one toggle to the other once clicked, almost independant of switching speed (ie: useless). A rather expensive option, but one which could provide very reliable keyboard scanning is using optical sensing. IR LED's per 'bank', along with phototransistors. Complicated, but I guess its wherther you're making it copmletely form scratch or not. BuriedCode.

Depends on what you have available to you. It's certainly not 'easy' given the pitch. Here is what I would do in order of preference (and therefore, the easiest/most expensive first) 1)Buy two FFC sockets, an FFC cable to match the one you have, and buy/make a PCB. This is a simple cable -> socket <PCB> socket -> FFC cable. 2)The above without the second cable. FFC cable 'can' be soldered to a PCB if its polyamide (yellowy brown stuff), so you could get a 0.5mm pitch PCB adapter originally used for IC's (tqfp100, or TSSOP) its not easy but not as hard as you think. Tin the pads on the PCB, remove the excess with solder wick. Cover in flux, and with a heavily tinned iron, go across each pad so it has a 'bit' of solder, a small raised bump on each pad. Put the FFC cable face down on the connections, and gently heat the back with your iron, or preferably, a hot air reworkstation. 3)Most difficult: buy ONE socket, solder wires to the socket, and the other end of the wires to an easier socket, such as a standard IDC connector, or perhaps a 0.1" (2.54mm) pin header. I guess it all depends on what you want to connect this cable to, original equipment? or your own custom made stuff? Also note, any combination of the above options is possible, its just a question or money, time and skill :) Ebay has plenty of very cheap PCB SMT adapters for which you can connect your flex cable socket too, and break it out to a DIP for a header or just wires. BuriedCode (yes, I missspelled my name in the forum!)