I'm not as good at soldering as I wish..
It took me a while with those wires on the CPU pins You know when you think that your hand doesn't shake until you look thru the magnifier and see the tip of the iron moving 3 pins to each side and you think "How the heck am I going to make it stop on the right pin?" specially when there are already wires soldered on other pins quite next to it.. I mean you even have tio hold your breath he he.. not easy.
Joao
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Yes i know what you mean. Just completed my one on the stock bd. Went cross eyed trying to put all those wires on. Just hope we dont have any more wires
to fit to those CPU pins.
At 60+ your eyes are stuffed and you shake, oh for being young again, specially with this micro technology.
Give me a good Valve Operated unit, plenty of room to work.
Gave myself a scare after completeing the job. Metered out the switch and couldnt get a good reading. Just about to cut out my switch and start again.
Put my magnifying glasses on and had one last look. Then spotted the 3k3 resistors, breathed a big SIH of relief.
Another thing about ageing is MEmory loss.
Les
Have to admit, I've been thinking about that pin concept for a while, my boards are here, but the workspace wasn't ready, so been on hold.
My preference would be to use a short piece of ribbon cable, there's 5 wires for the old switches, and then 4 wires for the rotary and centre button, what I wasn't sure of yet is if the common for the switches and the common for the rotary is the same, or if they need to be kept separate.
If they are common, then that's very easy, it's a piece of 8 way, if the are not, then 9 way, which could be split down from a piece of 16 or similar.
Another option might be to use Arduino style bread board cables, they come with pins on the ends if I remember correctly, so that gives a good fix on the boards, and allows them to be separated at a later date for whatever reason. Pins would mean less risk of "hairy" soldering, which can be a problem if multi core wire is used, and a whisker of wire across 2 tracks can be very hard to see when fine gauge wire is being used.
My thought on the use of the centre button is that it becomes the replacement for a menu long, without having to be long, and the menu short could stay on the original menu button, which would help avoid the problems of did it take the entry or not, so the centre button is the accept, the old menu becomes the escape up a level, or back, or whichever.
Things like model name are slightly more tricky, in that there's multiple moves across the field, and for selecting the character. The rotary is for sure a better way of selecting the character to be entered, would it makes sense to take whaterever value is in the field as being the new character if a left.right is used to move across the field, so select the field, move the rotary to select the character, which changes as the rotary is moved, and then when left/right is hit, that temporarily fixes the character that was under the cursor before the move, then move to the previous/next character, change it in the same way, and then take a centre button to accept the global change for the field. That would save a lot of button presses, as long as there's somewhere to temporarily store the old value and the WIP new one without doing EPROM writes. I would also allow an overflow from the right end to the left end in either direction, and only use the centre as an accept/move on button, to either the next value (on things like the limits screen) or to the next modifyable field that's appropriate, which in some cases would be a return to the higher level.
Another option for the left right buttons, or up down depending on the context, would be to use them to do a direct set to the maximum or minimum value for the field, and the rotary is the step value move. In model settings for example, up/down moves to next character, left/right move to the first or last field of the select area, or maybe the first (space I think) and middle, (or lower case a) last is only one rotate from first, and rotary is then the individual select. If we want to save screen real estate space to use it for other things, maybe left right could be a shift on/off option, so only half as many characters to display on screen.
Having said that, do we actually need to display the entire character set, if it can be scrolled on screen in the intended position, that removes the need to step through the characters below the field, which could save a chunk of space on that screen for other things, maybe even save some space in memory too.
On limits and similar, one of the buttons could be minimum (-100) and the other zero, with an "overflow" from -100 to +100 only needing one click of the rotary.
That's my 2c worth for this evening, I think some of these thoughts may be worth playing with to see how they work in practise, if it's not too much coding to acheive it.
Finally I have installed my rotary encoder. Reading through all the notes, and pics from others was very helpful, but this took several hours by the time when it was done.
Specific notes from my install:
- Removing old switches: - cutting pins from old switches with sharp sidecutters, then desoldering pins was relatively easy
- In shorting the 4 sets of pins I found wire wrap tool and wire wrap wire to be quite easy (better than trying to solder)
- one hassle was getting the pins physically aligned to fit in the ersky9x board
- when installing the ersk9x board with encoder on sub board to check fit, I found it was slightly mis-registered and the wheel was hard up against top left of case. There were two reasons for this. Firstly the encoder sub board fouled the case slightly at the right side (looking from inside) . Solution - Trim sub board slightly. Secondly, the erSky9x board sits down towards base of the transmitter housing slightly; because it is hard up against the three vertical plastic ribs at the bottom of the case. I trimmed these ribs to let the board float a bit more. Then sanded the encoder hole slightly.
It almost worked first time. Ended with left click not working. Multimeter check showed one of my wire wraps was not connecting properly and a short patch wire was used at top of the board.
Now onto software updates, coprocessor updates, and everything else.....
Crucial wrote:I managed to cut the board off with a dremel cut off wheel and a thin "diamond" coated bit. I think I am done with this mod for my sky9x board. I am going to solder the push buttons back on and call it quits.
Looks like I am facing a similiar situation to Crucial (but for different reasons). I posted earlier that all was working but the Up arrow would almost always go to the wrong menu. With the suspicion the encoder/button assembly was fouling the case; I filed out the case. No help. In other respects the wheel functionally worked (except I never saw rotating wheel changing values).
Then I did a circuit review, and used a multimeter to check what was happening (between common and each directional switch output). I found a strange condition; when the up button is pressed, the left button is shorted to it. All other buttons (including left) when pressed, work fine (and don't short any others). In thinking it through, I don't think this can be a solder short or wiring problem as it would be permanently shorted. This means there is something wrong in the encoder wheel itself.
I am grappling with how to get this off... Have solder wicked out the solder; but I can see I aren't going to free all the pins. Cutting like Crucial did or hacksawing might be the way. Sigh.
ANyone else got any alternative ideas of what might cause this fault.
i also thought it is the encoder. I suspected it is the material of the outer ring, when one side is pushed, it actually pulled the adjust 'button' down as well some times.
I have tested to push a little off the direct center (like 90 degree right/left /up/down) and it happened less.
this is just my suspicion can't prove it , yet.
I also have extra board and encoder to place with Sky9x 3.0 board. I will find out if it is the same.
So I had a go at removing it with a hacksaw blade and it has seemingly gone quite well. Perhaps 15mins max. Saw each side; remove 2 pins; repeat. No seeming board damage. Of course when I remove the whole thing, the wheel seems like it is OK (grrrr - dont like not knowing what caused a fault - and strange one at that). PCB destroyed, wheel not.
One thought when I examine this mechanically, when one depresses the outer ring to push a directional button, there is a small plastic retainer which depresses behind the wheel. If one mounts the wheel too close to the PCB this can't seemingly move. Not sure what happens then. I might mount it 0.5mm or so off the PCB when I do round 2.
MikeB wrote:What PCB did you use? It should have holes in it to allow those pieces of plastic to move into.
Mike.
You are correct. I didn't see this when I first dissembled; but I did when reassembling. So this is not it - and I really am not sure what happened for such a strange fault. Can't explain it with a simple solder or other short that wasn't symmetric with both rather than just one switch.
Anyway; the good news - in an amazing short time I rebuilt my spare board, fitted, and have it all working! Lots easy when you have done it before.
Question - rotary endcoder - in what screens is this supposed to work? I can't seem to find anywhere it is used (I have divisor as 2 - not sure if I have to enable it somewhere else)
I've got a few tweaks I need to commit, but the encoder 'should' work in most screens. Try LONG LEFT, then the encoder should move between menus. Press the encoder switch, and you should go up and down, press the switch again and you should be able to edit the entry. LONG press the switch should take you back to the top, another one back to the main screens. You can't go left and right inside a menu. One of the tweaks is to sort that.
Mike.
erskyTx/er9x developer
The difficult we do immediately,
The impossible takes a little longer!
Okay, fine. I'll make another batch of boards. I won't be able to order encoders or pins unfortunately, as organizing that is what slowed down so many shipments last time.
I have another question. Is there a definitive fix on the sky9x board for the encoder speed issue? There was talk of changing or removing some capacitor or resistor. I'm up for the challenge this weekend.
Hippo wrote:Okay, fine. I'll make another batch of boards.
I think once the tweak is done. Everyone that can do some soldering would get the encoder upgrade. Stock board or Sky board.
Hippo: you better keep your drilling/cutting bits in stock in the near future.
Some suggestions. the board used in the last batch is really too thick for the purpose. I think half thickness will do a great job if you can find one. And, on the side where we need to trim off to fit in the 'well', you may be able to cut it right off the batt so the board will be a 'drop in' without any mod. You already have the measurement of where and how much to cut from the original. Lastly, may be two predrilled holes at each 'tab' for use with the screws, if people wants to use wires instead of the pins to fix the encoder.
Just some suggestions.
Hippo: I don't have an exploded view of the mod I mentioned , but this pic should tell pretty much about the trimming on the side and the predrilled holes for screws to fix the board. Actually, it won't hurt to trim the other side for 1mm too. in mine, the side under the HK light is a tight fit to the LCD edge, I am sure some will be just a little off and won't fit right in.
MikeB wrote:I've got a few tweaks I need to commit, but the encoder 'should' work in most screens. Try LONG LEFT, then the encoder should move between menus. Press the encoder switch, and you should go up and down, press the switch again and you should be able to edit the entry. LONG press the switch should take you back to the top, another one back to the main screens. You can't go left and right inside a menu. One of the tweaks is to sort that.
Mike.
Ok, I am happy to say this is working fine (Phew). I had not tried the sequence of pushing center button, then adjusting value.
Hippo:
I made a mistake. Keep the thick pcb board you used last time.
that actually 'raise' the wheel a little more on the Tx, I did trim the tab to half thickness. but if using half thickness pcb, the wheel won't pop up high enough on Tx and has to resort to soldering the encoder higher on the pcb back side for people wants to use wires instead of pins. I was thinking the wrong way. Blame on the jet lag.
If you want the encoder to protrude slightly from the front of the radio, shave just a little off the ends of the mounting posts (the ones for the original button frame) on the front half of the radio before installation. Should work the same with either the hard or soft-wired approach.
I put up an incredibly crappy webpage to allow folks to order the V2 PCB's. Just make sure to put your forum name in the order somewhere so I can PM you when everything ships.
You know when you think that your hand doesn't shake until you look thru the magnifier and see the tip of the iron moving 3 pins to each side 
and you think "How the heck am I going to make it stop on the right pin?" specially when there are already wires soldered on other pins quite next to it.. I mean you even have tio hold your breath he he.. not easy.
