Got my new boards in for the latest widget design. On the left is the DCC Amplifier, it turns the logic level signal from the widget into a 15v DCC signal. The board on the right is the new Megawidget.
I have moved away from SOIC components as they are hard as heck to solder by hand. So this one sports an Atmega328 28 pin thru-hole microcontroller. I still have one SOIC component, the 3.3v regulator for the network module but it’s a pretty easy hand solder and the thru-hole version is ridiculously large.
Another advantage to this microcontroller is I can run it at 16mhz using an external crystal. It’s a pretty speedy little sucker at that clock rate.
The boards came out perfect in terms of electrical connections, I didn’t have to cut any traces or add any jumper wires. However I do have a bit of a spacing problem on both the controller and the DCC amp that I will have to address on the next pass. The ISP programmer port is too close to the bluetooth module and the logic input on the AMP requires that I wire it instead of putting a pin header – but for now they are ok.
The plan is to refactor all of my existing code on the firmware side and get it all squeaky clean- bluetooth network, servo control and the DCC output. Hope to have that done this weekend. Eventually it will drive a TCS WOW Sound 5A DCC controller.