PAW5 - Oledy, a generic OLED breakout board

[matseng]

As mentioned in an earlier post I'll try to do one small PCB project every week and then send for PCB's of it every Monday.

This week I'll be busy with other things so I'll make this weeks project very simple. In fact tt's so simple that I've already did it last week. :-) So unless someone comes up with any ideas for changes I have this "week off".

The Oledy board is a 5x5 cm board meant to be cut in half ending up with two boards 2.5 x 5 cm. Each board have a two 16-pin headers that are connected to four arrays of 32 solder pads. All eight pad arrays are of different pitch to match different OLED displays.

The piches are 0.50, 0.60, 0.62, 0.65, 0.70, 0.80, 0.845 and 1.00 mm

[Sjaak]

Cool, as everyone loves OLED :D

By looking at the rendering i think your smdpads needs to be wider. Another thought is the standard pinheaders Eagle come up with. For .1" the drill is a bit small (it is a tight fit) and the outside diameter is a bit small to solder it nicely. It is ok for DIP i guess. Need to check the brd files closely to confirm it.

Edit: BTW happy week 'off' ;)

[systemstech]

Try to say that three times fast Oledy, Oledy, Old Lady. :)

[matseng]

By looking at the rendering i think your smdpads needs to be wider.

Yes, they are a but on the narrow side, but my thinking is that it will reduce the risk of getting solderbridges. A bridge on a tqfp is easy to fix with a wick or even just some flux and heat, but a bridge under the flex-film is not so easy.

Narrow pads = larger distance between them art the same pitch. At least I hope so.....

[matseng]

Try to say that three times fast Oledy, Oledy, Old Lady. :)

It also means "already" in Singlish. The creole language spoken in Malaysia and Singapore. It's a mix of malay, mandarin, hokkien, english and some french/portuguese mixed in for good measure.

A nice coincidence considering the board is oledy done ;-)

[dchcaracter]

Hi! How is this supposed to be used with a breadboard? YOu'll not be able to connect any wires this way. Or it's not supposed to be used this way?

[matseng]

True... They can't be used in a breadboard, the pcb's would have had to been double the width then to get all 32 pins in a single row.

So the plan was to insert two rows of standard 0.1" male pin headers and then use regular breadboard jump cables (female->male) for the connections you need.

Or insert 0.1" female pin headers (like the ones on an Arduino) and then use male->male breadboard cables.

[Alex555]

Could there be a large enough gap between the headers so it could be plugged in like an IC would be?

[matseng]

The gap is probably not an even multiple of 100 mil. But would it really help? The holes in the breadboard would be covered by the pcb.

But there sure are some room for improvement on this breakout board so I might revisit it for a later PAW...

[Sleepwalker3]

Could it possibly be put on its side, like DP has done with a PIC board and a couple of other things? For me it makes no real diff, but for some it may.

[matseng]

That is certainly an option, but it would cause the OLED to be dangling from its wires...

But if just breaking out 19 pins of the 32 pads would be ok there could be a 19 pin header at the top that can be cross-connected to arbitrary pads on the pcb. Like this... (The bordered area is the cross-connect going from 32 to 19)

[matseng]

My wife tells me that the PCBs arrived today and looks green and "nice". :-)

I can't confirm that since I'm in Bangkok this week...

[Sjaak]

My wife tells me that the PCBs arrived today and looks green and "nice". :-)

I can't confirm that since I'm in Bangkok this week...

Too bad!! I was curious if the pads were ok.

[Sjaak]

Any chance to check them out already? :D

[matseng]

Got back home last night so I had a look at them this morning and they look good. Even the 0.50mm pitch version got a tiny sliver of soldermask between the pads.

I'll try a oled and a nokia lcd and see how they are to solder. And whether the numbering will be obscured by the pinheaders or not..