assembling a few more OtterCam-s3‘s today.
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assembling a few more OtterCam-s3‘s today. Haven’t soldered a BGA in a while, so wish me luck
this shouldn’t be too hard though, it’s a pretty coarse pitch and my technique should still work pretty well
two lovely beings recently started working on the firmware again, we now have a bare Debian Linux running on it, 'just' missing the image sensor driver and the mipi to encoder to USB/Ethernet stream pipeline… how ward can it be, right?
we have been working on this since *checks the note on the pcb* 2021.. 
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@janamarie MicroSD slot says owo :3
@scy uwu
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two lovely beings recently started working on the firmware again, we now have a bare Debian Linux running on it, 'just' missing the image sensor driver and the mipi to encoder to USB/Ethernet stream pipeline… how ward can it be, right?
we have been working on this since *checks the note on the pcb* 2021.. this board is somewhat of a nightmare fuel to networks people, please note the ethernet decoupling.. ~ :3c
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this board is somewhat of a nightmare fuel to networks people, please note the ethernet decoupling.. ~ :3c
I got this board assembled from JLCPCB, but a lot of components are still missing. This is mostly due to this board being one of the very early boards running through their PCBA process! I actually wrote on their blog about how the PCBA process works at the time, they allowed me to test it very early :3
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assembling a few more OtterCam-s3‘s today. Haven’t soldered a BGA in a while, so wish me luck
this shouldn’t be too hard though, it’s a pretty coarse pitch and my technique should still work pretty well
@janamarie Nice „zero parts“ strain relief slot in the pcb and „why shouldn’t I rotate that part 45°“-technique
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this board is somewhat of a nightmare fuel to networks people, please note the ethernet decoupling.. ~ :3c
@janamarie where... where is the big chonky transformer??? :s -
@janamarie where... where is the big chonky transformer??? :s
@kouett there are 4 big capacitors~ :3c
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@janamarie Nice „zero parts“ strain relief slot in the pcb and „why shouldn’t I rotate that part 45°“-technique
️@nblr if I ever redo this, I will not allow myself any 90° or 45° rotated parts
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@kouett there are 4 big capacitors~ :3c
@janamarie I'm not feeling very well -
@janamarie@mystical.garden @evey@chaos.social @kouett@soc.kouett.net.eu.org oh! i expected around 2x as much, this is nice
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@janamarie@mystical.garden @evey@chaos.social @kouett@soc.kouett.net.eu.org oh! i expected around 2x as much, this is nice
@domi @evey @kouett this is actually not even my original idea, the first version of the OtterCam is not the OtterCam-s3, but the OtterCam-z7, featuring a Zynq-7020 instead of the Allwinner-s3. I have had a schematic of that since 2020, started it in altium, moved to kicad, redid the schematic twice, once with a Zynq-7015, then the 7020 again with more modern parts in 2024/2025, couldn't bring myself to design the board in the end because I just couldn't afford it at the time and now here we are, the OtterCam-z7 will still happen, maybe soon even, but I kind of want to get the OtterCam-s3 to spit out an image first..
Weirdly enough, the z7 would probably have been a bit easier for me alone, I can use Vivado and write gateware, but I really am not good at doing embedded linux and V4L shenanigans
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@domi @evey @kouett this is actually not even my original idea, the first version of the OtterCam is not the OtterCam-s3, but the OtterCam-z7, featuring a Zynq-7020 instead of the Allwinner-s3. I have had a schematic of that since 2020, started it in altium, moved to kicad, redid the schematic twice, once with a Zynq-7015, then the 7020 again with more modern parts in 2024/2025, couldn't bring myself to design the board in the end because I just couldn't afford it at the time and now here we are, the OtterCam-z7 will still happen, maybe soon even, but I kind of want to get the OtterCam-s3 to spit out an image first..
Weirdly enough, the z7 would probably have been a bit easier for me alone, I can use Vivado and write gateware, but I really am not good at doing embedded linux and V4L shenanigans
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I got this board assembled from JLCPCB, but a lot of components are still missing. This is mostly due to this board being one of the very early boards running through their PCBA process! I actually wrote on their blog about how the PCBA process works at the time, they allowed me to test it very early :3
clearance..
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clearance..
@janamarie does it make alignment easier?
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clearance..
@janamarie ...is clearance, Clarence! If #BlondiHacks taught me anything
And dont call me Shirley
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clearance..
it boots!!! Soldering the BGA was much more trivial than anticipated, the QFN in the lower left corner was certainly worse…
next up: I think I will do at least a second board and uh, the sensor board, which contains the 'spicy BGA', the image sensor. It’s in theory as easy to solder, but it’s also a rather fragile part, one entire face must not be touched too much
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it boots!!! Soldering the BGA was much more trivial than anticipated, the QFN in the lower left corner was certainly worse…
next up: I think I will do at least a second board and uh, the sensor board, which contains the 'spicy BGA', the image sensor. It’s in theory as easy to solder, but it’s also a rather fragile part, one entire face must not be touched too much
speaking of…
this is how the image sensors were delivered. How does that make you feel?
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@janamarie does it make alignment easier?
@atna very!
a press fit always is easier
