Sometimes it's better when the board doesn't work first time as you learn twice as much in debugging. Good job and can't wait til the next video

Yay! I haven't slept and suddenly a new James Sharman video drops, forget sleep, I got a video to watch.

Love the "Frame of Shame". I did something similar years ago. But for me, it was a "Box of Failure". Mainly because so many things I did failed that I needed an entire box to fit them all! LOL

Thank you for sharing warts & all! I love the way that you are now so familiar with this machine, that debugging is so swift. Keep it up! (I do similar stuff in my home lab, but it's hard to get muscle memory moving from one project to another.)

That hotplate soldering looks like magic! Since those pins were the last to reflow, maybe it just needs a few more seconds?

I’m happy to see the board finally working as intended!

Nice to see the board is working as intended. I'm intrigued by the idea of soldering using a hotplate. I am going to watch your earlier video now ;-).

Great vid. I like the whole troubleshooting process. Some people leave that stuff out, but I think it's what makes electronics videos more interesting. I have a suggestion though - try using a "hoof" soldering tip, with the small divot in the end. I put off buying one for many years, as they are a bit more expensive. I think the tip for my Metcal was around £30. But it's amazing on SOIC etc. I wish I'd bought it years ago. If you get just the right amount of solder on the tip (and always apply flux to the pins), it can solder them perfectly almost every time via drag soldering. Occasionally you get a few solder bridges, but those are easy to fix with solder wick, or sometimes just the iron.

Well done getting the second version working.

Nice job! I'm really impressed how quickly you diagnosed the problem with the bad solder joints!

Those tiny resistor arrays - the fact that they solder so much better this way is refreshing. It must be the combination of fine pitch spacing and relatively low thermal mass at that pitch, that makes them a [censored] to solder any other way. Curious what happened with the last chip to solder in; I wonder if it is a heat uniformity issue on the plate.

Ah I'm so glad I caught this. In the middle of designing my own PCB the last several days and watching you place and solder gives me a lot of good ideas. Thanks! Great vid!

Awesome work, as always!

That hotplate soldering method was pretty dam awesome! Will keep it in mind if and when I get around to design a PCB for the first time.

Love it ! 'The Frame of Shame '...cheers

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I adore your work, we all do.

Seems definitely faster and less fiddly than hot air! For your lighting situation, I suppose you would need a few diffused lights shining from all angles to create uniform lighting. If you set each one at a fairly low intensity, the board is evenly lit due to their number. However it only really reflects the light of the one fixture hitting it at the right angle, so the relative intensity is lower and you see it less. Just thinking out loud I have not tested this

Another great video where the electronic part is way over my pay grade. I can do the programming just fine, but my board making skills are sadly lacking. I do love to watch the whole process.

At least it was not a horrible problem. Albeit a rerun of boards, it was generally an easy one. Loving the hotplate.

Just out of curiosity, were a fan were to design a peripheral for the build and share it, would we get to see it installed on the machine? Also, I love the deadpan of the “change the version number to show our shame line.”

Nice work :)

So its almost ready to go for Giana Sisters :) .. that relieving feeling when it was just a cold joint ;) I have bodged a nice beefy headlamp on one of those Optivisors.. i like it very much for soldering.. not well suited for camera footage i guess.

Great project! The reflow process is very satisfying to watch! And the speed at which you work is staggering 😉 Since you have done a deep dive into VGA technology: converting voltage levels from whatever your logic is running at to VGA compatible levels I guess would be achieved through a simple voltage divider. Do you happen to know a way to convert such high frequency signals up from 0.7V max to e.g. 3.3V? Keep up the good work!

At 12:38 in the video, the third of the four pins in the corner of the board looks like it has only just about connected with solder on only one side of the pin. It appears connected to the ground plane, so may not be critical, but it's probably worth checking and cleaning up if it needs it. That's a great job with the hot plate though, despite the minor glitch. Very impressed.

Creative video, thanks :)

I'm not into electronics I think you need more subs So commenting here for algorithm

Well there is a video idea! Build an RGBWW lighting rig and test what is the optimal setting and placing of RGBWW LED colours for soldering

OK, I will remove the term version number from my thinking and use shame indicator instead. Nice one ...

I like the idea of taping the parts on to a piece of card. I'll be stealing that. (Edit - try a polarizing filter on your cam - that might get rid of the lighting glare you mentioned. LCD displays have them - I wonder if that's a source that'd work.) (Edit edit - dodgy solder joint @16:59 beside "at" in MemData". I think that whole connector might be worth a reflow)

If you've been having problems with solder bridging on the resistor packs, I'd either reduce the size of the pads or the size of the holes in the solder stencil. Reducing the amount of paste across the board just seems like a bad idea, and I assume the three pins not connecting would not have happened with a full load of paste.

Couple of things could have happened with those pins that didn't reflow properly, maybe they never quite got hot enough as they were the last to reflow or maybe the pins had some contamination on them that the flux didn't quite have chance to eat through. Of course it could be something as simple as the pins being slightly bent but unlikely with the chip being taken straight out of the tape carrier. If you check the spec of your paste there will be a recommended time that you have to leave it at reflow temperature. This is to ensure the flux has chance to eat through any contamination on the pins, just seeing the paste melt is sometimes not enough. There may be some uneven heating on your hot plate too which is why the past didn't flash off evenly over the board. So many variables with hot plate soldering, but a very good result for a first attempt.

I always use the ceramic hob in the kitchen to solder my smd.

It seems using polarizing filter greatly reduces the reflections (also helps to read titles on the ICs for example much more easily) for some soldering/microscope sessions. At least "SDG Electronics" channel has a video on that kind of microscope-setup scenario "recently".

If or when you fill the frame of shame, consider making a print of the frame of shame PCB's

I've been looking at getting some PCBs made and the shipping costs really sting! Have you done any detailed research on this front? I've done a bit of looking around and it seems like most of them are coming from China and the shipping cost is similar, but I haven't looked extensively yet and figured I'd ask if you've already done that extensive research before bothering myself lol. I also looked into methods of making PCBs at home, but it seems like it will be difficult, time consuming and probably just as costly, all for a lower quality result at the end of it.

Problem occurred at 9:41 - one leg of the HCT541 was bent and resulted in the corner of the chip lifting and preventing the pins you found from contacting the pads and therefore being unsoldered.

17:25 me: "YAY!!!!!", q: why on earth do we get so invested in the works of others? it this is a specifically human trait I wonder? STATS 1963 total words spoken in HMS: 00:08:23 of total time: 00:19:20 excluding 00:10:56 silence 233 de-silenced wpm

"Visual artefacts"😂

Love the frame of shame! I have a bucket of f**k-it.