In what seemed like an oscillating crystal soldered to a QFP chip of sorts above has some very interesting theories on Facebook. But do note that there is no facility available to put the crystal on the PCB, not even a silkscreen. Some of them were:
- The Chip’s internal frequency is not accurate,
- They needed a specific frequency for the Serial Port or other frequency sensitive functions,
- The design has a frequency shift,
- Maybe its a design prototype and its for a new feature, etc and so on
But the photo, hilarious to most, felt painful to me. Lately, I have been sending out and receiving a lot of PCB failures due to the design on my part. I can blame it on impatience and even fatigue or wrong assumptions but the damage is there every 2 weeks later after I sent them out. So, this is bad because not only did I waste money, but also time. Instead of getting the results within 2 weeks, I get it within the month, which is bad if the design needed more revisions because of some technical issues. For example, ever since I experimented with ICSP, you can say I am quite addicted to it and it more or less spilled over from the prototyping stage.
So, my development time can go from anywhere from months to years. And the Blade Runner Spinner is a testament to that. The Project started in the early 2019 and it was already working. However, in 2024, I had to redesign the board since using the planned connectors would be too difficult for other Users. Yeah, I am deciding to get it out to market with the least soldering as possible, and thus, the design has to be reworked again.
