Hello again!
After almost 4 months of nothing, I finally managed to throw some money at this project and get some PCBs ordered and assembled.
This is CV15, which will hopefully be the last version for now.
Of course, the PCBs didn't come without some mistakes, but nothing too serious and I was able to fix everything.
But from the beginning.
In a local shop, I found some nice wooden boxes and decided to make the PCBs fit in them, with the relays that I already had.
Unfortunately, the shop stopped selling them, shortly after I placed my PCB order - bummer.
Oh well. then I tested all the relays I had, since I baught them used, I thought that would be a good idea. of all 220 I had, about 15 had weak coils.
So in the last minute, I decided to order IC sockets to put those relays in there, since they will fail eventually. This also meant, that the whole assembly wouldn't fit in the small wooden box anymore, so I now have to make my own one.
While assembling and testing, I found out that I forgot some traces in the design process, which called for some bodge wires, nothing wild.
Also, the inputs of the display PCBs were in the wrong order. Took me almost an hour to figure that out.
Also, some of the solder pads were too close together for my liking.
Other than that, within the first 30 minutes of it finally running, another relay went weak and had to be replaced, at this moment I was very thankful for the (quite expensive) sockets I put in.
Conclusion:
- total cost of ~100€ including shipping and import taxes for 5 sets of PCBs and some parts, without relays.
-some issues, but fixable. the next PCB order would be without those problems.
-It's time to finally admit to buying new relays, not used ones. sure, they are at 0,20€ each, but the failure rate is quite high.
- I have to find another housing for it, or make my own one.
Other than that, time will tell how well it goes.
This is as compact as it gets with these relays.
As always, here are some Pictures.
Have a nice day
Daniel