What do you do if you’re laying out a PCB, and you need to jump over a trace, but don’t want to use a via? The usual trick is using a zero Ohm resistor to make a bridge over a PCB trace. Zero Ohm resistors — otherwise known as ‘wire’ — are a handy tool for PCB designers who have backed themselves into a corner and don’t mind putting another reel on the pick and place machine. Here’s a new product from Keystone that is basically wire on a tape and reel. It’s designed to jump traces on a PCB where SMD zero ohm resistors and through-hole jumpers aren’t possible. I suppose you could also use it as a test point. They’re designed for high current applications, but before we get to that, let’s consider how much power is dissipated into a zero ohm resistor.
By the way, as of this writing, Mouser is showing 1,595 for Keystone’s 5100TR PCB jumpers in stock. They come on a reel of 1,000, and a full reel will cost you $280. This is significantly more expensive than any SMD zero ohm resistor, and it means someone bought four hundred of them. The electronic components industry is weird and you will never understand it.
There’s a new product from ODROID, and you want it. The ODROID-GO is a Game Boy and Sega Master System emulator running on an ESP-32, has a fantastic injection molded case, and looks phenomenal. You can buy it now for $32. Does this sound familiar? Yes, a few months ago, the PocketSprite was released. The PocketSprite is the tiniest Game Boy ever, and a project [Sprite_TM] introduced to the world at the 2016 Hackaday Superconference.
This week, the speaker schedules for two awesome cons were announced. The first is HOPE, at the Hotel Penn on July 20th. Highlights of this year? [Mitch Altman] is talking about DSP, [Chelsea Manning] will be on stage, someone is talking about HAARP (have fun with the conspiracy theorists), and someone is presenting an argument that [Snowden] is an ideological turd. The speaker schedule for DEF CON was also announced. The main takeaway: god bless the CFP board for reigning in all the blockchain talks, the Nintendo Switch was broken wide open this year, but there’s only a talk on the 3DS, and there’s more than enough talks on election hacking, even though that was a success of propaganda instead of balaclava-wearing hackers.
The C.H.I.P. is no more, or at least that’s the rumor we’re running with until we get some official confirmation. When it was introduced, the C.H.I.P. was a Linux system on a chip with complete register documentation. It appears the end of C.H.I.P. is upon us, but have no fear: there’s a community building the PocketC.H.I.P., or the C.H.I.PBeagle. It’s a single board computer based around the OSD3358 from Octavo, the same system found in the PocketBeagle. Source in KiCAD, and people are working on it. Thanks [smerrett79] for the tip.
RC=0 stuartl@rikishi ~ $ curl http://keyelco.com/category.cfm/Test-Points-Tips-Probes-Clips/SMT-PCB-Jumpers/p/518/id/1206RC=0 stuartl@rikishi ~ $
Fantastic, no more fiddly 0Ohm resistors, I’ll just use this completely blank page instead.
Yeah, the link is broken.
works on the eight connections and brazillian machines I have available to me. I dunno, man.
works now
It is appearing now. Some time ago it wasn´t loading, though.
Here’s what it looks like:
https://eu.mouser.com/images/keystoneelectronics/images/5100.jpg
And here’s the Mouser page: https://eu.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Keystone-Electronics/5100TR?qs=9%252bwcgl%2FJqd1ffDmPkGSP%2Fw%3D%3D .
Would make a nice raised test point also…
Link downloads a ‘1206’ file after almost one minute of trying to reach it. Not working
In 5,4,3,2,1 and right about nowish Nintendo will release their army of lawyers
Even though Odroid do not tell you where to get roms, they will still be hit by a cease and deist from Nintendo for trade make infringement on “Nintendo Entertainment System”, “Nintento GameBoy”, “Nintendo GameBoy Color”.
imho, I’m more interested in it as a development device. It has an ESP32, lcd screen, battery and charger, buttons, a mono speaker, microsd card reader, and a case. The shipping from Korea is a bit expensive. It added $16 to the cost of mine. They have some examples showing how to use the 10-ping external gpio connector to read some sensors plugged into it, as well as using the ESP32 features like wifi and bluetooth. It’ll be interesting to see if people make any ESP32 native games for it too.
Same here. They have examples of Flappy Bird and Tetris running natively (at least I think they are). They’re apparently provided examples under the Arduino development environment.
Check out the TTGO dev board. It has all the same stuff on it, but not shaped like a gameboy. And is 3x cheaper.
I’ve seen those, and they are interesting. But they lack a case, and do not include the battery, and are somewhat inadequate in the button department. They still might be okay to get and play with as an alternative dev board.
One time I ordered a reel of 1206 zero ohm resistors from Digikey, and what I got was a reel of 1206 fuses.
So, I didn’t get what I ordered, but what I got is largely indistinguishable from what I ordered.
Above a certain current, all zero ohm resistors are fuses ;)
> Above a certain current, *any* resistor is a fuse.
FTFY.
and that is why resistors have a voltage rating: to break the arc.
I am sorry, I reported the parent comment by mistake, I don’t know how I could randomly click on such tiny link.
… above a certain current, semiconductors are firecrackers. Don’t ask how I know this.
+1
Been there, done that….
I’ve made smoke bombs out of transistors … it was quite magical …
I once put a board on a reflow plate without removing the Lithium coin battery…
So this automates bodges/hacks in mass produced production? The machines take away one more job from the human labor pool.
Yeah, I prefer paying a 1$/hour worker in China instead! /s
They don’t get paid comparably to workers in the West, but keep in mind that the reason so many people in China are willing to work at Foxconn, et al., have no life outside of work and send money home to their families, is that they can earn significantly more money working there than they could much closer to home. Using their services will do more to improve their conditions in the long term than boycotting them would. I don’t think it’s due to electronics manufacturing specifically, but China’s rising middle class has to be at least partly due to their significant, sustained trade surplus.
The idea of trickle down economics seems to work in China, making the richest people richer seems to be making the poorest people richer as well. That varies significantly around the world.
Sorry machines my bad, not entirely your fault, as always other human where complicit as well.
“enough talks on election hacking, even though that was a success of propaganda instead of balaclava-wearing hackers.”
I’m not sure that’s clear. Ever so often news quietly oozes out that the election system hacking was more widespread and significant than previously reported.
“Scientists are saying the future is going to be far more futuristic than they originally predicted.”
Ha! I was just thinking of that quote yesterday. Such an unusual movie.
I feel some of the subjects of this list might have some rather interesting comments, that then were removed and deleted even when they would be fine to show.
So knowing that it now it becomes much less interesting to even bother seeing the comments.
HAARP / conspiracy theorists:
i don’t particularly care, what you believe, but at least be informed that governments classify HAARP as a weather and climate modifying weapon.
calling this a conspiracy theory is just plain naïve and anybody claiming anything like that is either unable to read, biased or uninformed. the uninformed part is rather easy to resolve:
https://www.cftc.gov/sites/default/files/idc/groups/public/@lrfederalregister/documents/frcomment/08-004c002.pdf
https://www.nsf.gov/nsb/publications/1965/nsb1265.pdf
http://csat.au.af.mil/2025/volume3/vol3ch15.PDF
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-%2F%2FEP%2F%2FNONSGML+REPORT+A4-1999-0005+0+DOC+PDF+V0%2F%2FEN