A decade ago, while RISC architecture was busy changing everything and people were wearing Utilikilts without beards, hackers were doing something amazing. They repurposed off-the-shelf routers and turned them into what we would now call the Internet of Things. Need to set up a PBX? A Linksys router will do it. Want to drive a remote control car over the Internet? It’s your old friend, WRT54G.
Now that the Internet of Things is a thing, a few companies have realized people will buy bare bones router chipsets. It’s like an Arduino, or something, and it connects to the Internet. We’ll sell a million. Get Indiegogo on the phone.
The Onion Omega2 launched on Kickstarter last year, and so far has seen some success. They’ve shipped their units, and people are generally happy with them. One thing that wasn’t mentioned in the Kickstarter was the fundamental problem with the design. The pins on this seemingly breadboard-compatible dev board have a pitch of two millimeters. Horribly broken. Huge mistake. Terrible deal. Not the best people we have working on this.
The Onion Omega2 won’t fit in a breadboard, but Onion does offer a breakout ‘expansion dock’ for $15 USD. There’s a better, cheaper solution, though. You can complain about it on Hackaday.io’s Hack Chat. That’s what [zach] did, and a few minutes later, [davedarko] whipped up a quick PCB design to convert the 2mm header to the much more logical 0.1 inch header. Imperial units win once again.
After sending three dollars and twenty cents to OSHPark, [zach] had his pin adapters in hand. A few minutes with a soldering iron, and the Onion Omega2 is made compatible with every breadboard ever made.
If you have an Onion Omega2 and would like a really cool hexagonal sticker, here’s the project on OSHPark.
Wow, starting the metric vs imperial war again?
2mm or 1.27mm pitch headers are fine in some cases, but obviously not when a board is aimed at hobbyists who would want to use the board with a breadboard or perfboard.
So it’s not broken, it’s non-standard.
Typical clickbait trick. In this case, broken != not working, but in the sense of how the pins are broken out.
Brian likes clickbaity titles, and then loudly complain how people fall for them.
that’s actually from Zach, he called the onion broken on his hackaday.io page first.
Annoying, though. I fully thought this article would’ve something to do with the quite many Omega2’s with various soldering-defects, including RAM not being soldered down properly, or solder-bridges here and there, or solder-bridges to the RF-shield and so on. (The quality-control doesn’t seem very good) Instead, it’s just a pin-header converter.
I mean, sure, I have no complaints about the project itself, but the clickbait title annoys me.
Gosh!
So much whining … about nothing!
“Imperial is a superior unit of measurement. Metric is outdated.”
Get over yourselves with your inaccurate measurements and join the modern world!
However,
I wonder if that is what the problem is with my breadboard in that they are IMPs whereas my electronics is in Metric.
stop trolling and get a life.
Don’t feed the trolls!
+1
Please?
At this point in time, I’d really rather have the USA to not join the modern world, but rather stay in their current fantasy one.
It is pretty hard to disagree with that sentiment, but i feel a slightly “ussr” situation coming to its neighbors if they go all isolationist…
What exactly is innaccurate or imprecise about Imperial?
Sure 39.9 millionths may be a bit rougher on the tongue than 1 micron but if your measurements are off maybe just buy a better set of calipers?
exactly, Why write 1/39,000,000 when you can just write 1!
But neither is inaccurate. As you claimed imperial is.
rekt
Don’t mind Brian. We all know he is just bitter about his lack of ability, and must find vicarious glee from wherever he can. The metric vs. imperial question is the closest he can get to intellectual discussion; let’s give the retarded kid his harmless fun.
But the thing I’m actually wondering, why widen the board? Seems like a waste to me.
If one were to soldering the 0.1″ headers first, clip them short, stick a strip of plastic to ensure good insulation, then you could have the 0.1″ headers in a very narrow footprint; much easier to fit on a breadboard. Of course, this probably means changing to the distance between the 2mm and 0.1″ pins, to get the 0.1″ pin rows distance to be a multiple of 0.1″.
I generally like Hackaday articles. But this imperial bullshit has to stop.
The Rebels agree with you.
I’m still waiting for the vertical breakout headers. saves a lot on breadboard real estate.
Well, that went south quickly.
Metric south, or Imperial south? :-D
Magnetic South…
Why does Mcdonalds sell their processed waste in sizes, Small, Medium, Large, Obese, Ham planet. Yet American date format is Medium, Small, Large… THE ORDER IS OUT OF
this is all fine and dandy until someone uses just numbers, then I spend an inordinate amount of time trying to guess the date when the day is below 12.
I prefer the ISO date format yyyymmdd hh:mm:ss
It sorts easier. I really don’t care if someone else can’t figure it out.
Especially for file names. It makes it easy to find things.
mydomain_backup_YYMMDD
I don’t suppose there are any breadboards with 2mm spacing?
No, maybe in parallel dimensions – and I’d rather they stay there.
What! Don’t you have a hammer for that time you accidentally pick up 2mm breadboard instead of 2.54mm
Where’s my M2M 3G – 4G/LTE module?
Now that 2G is dead all can find as an alternative is mini PCI-e.
I love an article on 2G replacement modules for M2M IoT over 3G, 4G LTE
There is also work bing done by manufacturers to create a stand for Narrow Band – NB-LTE to reduce power consumption.
SIM5360? I’m creating ZeroPhone and facing the same problem now, but some helpful people have given me a couple of tips on those =)
“There is also work bing done…”
Subliminally advertising the Microsoft search engine?
B^)
ROFL, and I actually do use Bing!
Adafruit has a 3g cell module.
Thanks [CRImier] and [John]
It’s taken so long to get back to you because I have had my head buried in data-sheets. I have been looking at the SIM5360 series.
I also the pre-made mini PCIe modules are much easier to use to. They have a serial like interface rather than a parallel type but they don’t break out GPIO. Still good as a module for an 8-bitter which makes my solar power / battery budget much easier than an embedded computer running an OS.
Unfortunately cant use the mini PCIe module in production because of vibration issues with the connector but I will still be use it to help develop the code.
Once again the helpful people at HAD win the day again! Thanks.
I guess this is an example where we need a “Report article” link
Totally agree, I am so much dissapointed. So many hacks around waiting for being discovered but we get an article of an adapter with … st*pid sentcences around. Time wasted, after so many years following this blog this is the first time I considered deleting it from my feeds.
“The only winning move is not to play.”
Someone start a line of 2mm pitch breadboard. Problem solved. Except that the new problem is that people wouldn’t know what to whine about. (Or they’d whine about how many things there are that are still 0.1″).
Or that the breadboard is likely to be 50$/pcs and incompatible wit all the other chips/breakouts we typically use there. Just for you to know, 2mm stuff really isn’t that widespread.
I want 2mm. 2.54 is to big and 1.27 is to small. Of course it is going to be more expensive in the beginning but price will drop fast when everybody realise 2mm is the ultimate pin spacing. And it has nothing to do with imperial vs metric.
It is quite helpful but someone had to ask for it. Could’ve posted this one sooner.
I wanted to used the extra USB ports inside my intel NUC, but they are on 2mm headers.
Brian Benchoff, Please don’t turn HAD into Slashdot. Learn from their mistakes, click bait titles and articles ment to inflame ones senses may bring in more readers in the short term. In the long run, all it does is drive any meaning full discourse from the comments (seriously, look up, you’ll see). All people will do is complain about it and it does not further the long term goals of Hackaday, next thing you know it will be just a bunch of angry people arguing about pointless crap in the comments.
You may think its funny when you do this:
“The pins on this seemingly breadboard-compatible dev board have a pitch of two millimeters. Horribly broken. Huge mistake. Terrible deal. Not the best people we have working on this.”
but its really not, just as it isn’t funny when an elected official does it. In truth it is embarrassing! I come to Hackaday for the Hacks, not hack writing.
Finally, we get it! Americans use a system of measurement that they think is superior, this is a dead horse, lets stop kicking it please. I work in both systems and It doesn’t bother me one bit to use one or the other. In all of my science and math based classes growing up questions were given to us in both formats, where in assignments and tests some questions would be in imperial and some would be in metric. In the end, the only reason i personally prefer metric is that i don’t have to worry about remembering or looking up conversion factors when i am scaling my work up or down. Other than that there is no difference between the two as they are both numerical methods of measuring stuff and using a different measuring system does not change how much stuff there is.
Absolute rubbish clickbait! The original post wasn’t nearly as hyperbolic in its title!
https://hackaday.io/page/2774-how-to-fix-your-broken-onion-omega2-board-for-only-320
/s
:) here we are, creating a board that wants to join, connect and bridge the imperial and metric units and it’s followers, but I guess the world isn’t ready yet.
Someone needs to design 3D-printable breadboards of any pitch you desire.
How can we make easy diyable connection clips/strips?
reading the headline made me think that maybe others had a bricked onion2 like me. bricked after resetting to factory. and now I am trying to long-hold the reset button while powering up, nada.
anyway, the heading is a bit misleading.
This article is a disaster. Hackaday viewers way down, on it way out. Sad!
I wish I still fit into my utilikilt, and I do have a beard!
Perhaps what we need are breadboards with 2mm spacing!
Yay! It’s going to be a fun ride for us all as we watch Hack A Day circle the drain.