Keeping up with component changes is always a challenge for anyone designing electronics and recently I've had to implement tweaks to some of my PCBs. Today however, I'm delighted to announce the arrival of my latest January 2023 version PCBs! 🙂
The main difference to all my power supply boards, is the change of the 5V AC / DC converter. If you've already bought an Aurora or Super Nova, please don't panic. Vigortronix brought out a replacement for the model I originally used but I can't see any difference to the specification.
The keen-eyed will also note the inclusion of the Union Jack. All my stuff is built in the United Kingdom and I just felt obliged to reinforce the point.
Amongst my latest January 2023 version PCBs are my lovely Nebula boards but I'm still waiting for them to turn up. 🙁
Component changes aren't normally a big deal but when the physical format of a device changes, then PCBs need to be redesigned and this is costly. What do you do with the old PCBs that won't take the new component? Grr...
As mentioned above, the change of the 5V AC / DC converter that I use on Aurora and Supernova is one example. Another annoying example is the 5V shunt voltage reference diode I use on Aurora. The TO-92 packaged device I originally used, has become really very difficult to get hold of, especially in the 0.1% tolerance I specified. I had no option other than to redesign the Aurora board A PCB to take a SOT-23 packaged SMD device.
This is one reason why a small designer / builder like me, struggles to keep prices down. I can't buy components in quantity for this kind of stuff and this restricts the number of PCBs I can order in a single batch. It's just so annoying.
