Homemade Flux Remover

I was inspired by a video by Jeri Ellsworth that showed her using homemade flux remover. This is super simple a combo of alcohol and acetone. In this video, I use a 50/50 combo of the two. So that’s 32 oz. of flux remover for $3. I Googled flux remover and it ranges from $10 to $25 for 12 oz. So that a savings of at least about $70. I have been using this on about every board I can find and it has worked great on all of them. I heart saving money. 🙂

One Square Inch of Goodness

So a while ago I discovered that I needed a microcontroller in a really tight space. I tried an ATmega328P PU (DIP package), but try as I may, It would not fit. The answer? The ATmega328P AU (TQFP) this is a much smaller package, and for an added bonus, it has 2 extra ADC’s. This a great little board to squeeze in various projects, and opens the door to some very cool stuff I have coming up. Some of you might remember I put this board in a project I did a while ago when space was very limited. It’s just a handy little board to have on hand. 🙂

In the video above, I show some soldering with TQFP packages, as well as a little soldering with hot air. I need to figure out a way to record video from my brain. It would make things so much easier..

Oh, I almost forgot, the flux pen I used, found at Sparkfun.

The Eagle files for this board are on my Github page. Or just the schematic PDF.

Serial or Speed..

This video above demonstrates the speed difference between serial enabled/disabled on an Arduino Uno while toggling a pin output. Just a really simple test of how fast it can pull a pin high and low (without using direct port manipulation), with and with out serial enabled. I think that was the smallest Arduino sketch I ever wrote..

SMD Soldering – You can do it!

Here is a video on SMD (Surface Mount Device) soldering. In this video I show how to solder some SMD components on to a little board with an ATtiny85V, switch, LED, and resistor. The short version of this video just shows the resistor and LED (size 603) being soldered, the long version of this video shows everything being soldered. It’s really neat to open up the world of SMD. You can make really tiny (and cheap!) widgets! Continue reading

Yamaha AG Stomp Mod

I wanted to do a quick post on a mod I did to a Yamaha AG Stomp. An AG Stomp is a acoustic guitar effects pedal that was made in 1994, but no longer available.

The need was this: to gain more real estate space under a keyboard that was full of pedals, controllers, and switches. So the need to switch banks without taking up the whole size of the pedal was the goal. The answer was to build a small (3.64″L x 1.52″W x 1.22″D) pedal that had a single switch, had an easy way to tell witch bank you were on, have a signal indicator, and be road tough. The end result made the customer very happy, and he requested that I share, so here it is. 🙂

You can check out Austin Biel at austinbiel.com, an awesome musician (including the best keyboard player I have heard), and an outstanding friend.