OV9

I wonder how quickly one of the solder traces will get hot and melt? Probably after shaking itself off the fibreglass sheet and bridging to the adjoining trace…

The way the solder trace in his testing clip moved as he turned up the current was blatantly ignored

Jobbo wrote: Sun Oct 27, 2024 1:09 pm I wonder how quickly one of the solder traces will get hot and melt? Probably after shaking itself off the fibreglass sheet and bridging to the adjoining trace…

Normally all the tracks are covered with non-conductive solder resist of course, but with stoopidpcb(TM) if one track peels off it’ll probably short across a whole load of other tracks.

Jobbo wrote: Sun Oct 27, 2024 1:09 pm I wonder how quickly one of the solder traces will get hot and melt? Probably after shaking itself off the fibreglass sheet and bridging to the adjoining trace…

The way the solder trace in his testing clip moved as he turned up the current was blatantly ignored

Myself an @mik were discussing this very point. You can see how easily the solder detaches in the video. I imagine parking it in the sun for a bit will be enough to melt the adhesive on the PCB and the solder detaches.

I know they didn’t want a screen, fair enough, but you can also get small gauge size screens and have any font and illumination you want.

I think the mismatch of the carbon weave would annoy me far more than their gauge issues tbh

Have they not watched car sos? Just call up “Welsh Q” and get a custom digital dash made

jamcg wrote: Sun Oct 27, 2024 2:16 pm Have they not watched car sos? Just call up “Welsh Q” and get a custom digital dash made

Had also thought about this.

I love it how the justification was that they didn't want to waste PCB material, on environmental grounds.

Firstly, you can extract the copper from a PCB in good enough quality to be re-used again.

Secondly, while the FR4 can't be re-used as circuit board material, it can be downcycled into something useful like building insulation - this is a bit like when you hear about plastic bottles being used for car interiors. Not good enough to hold yer pepsi, but good enough for you to sit in while you drink it.

So the environmental argument is, at best, utter bollocks.

That, and as a few people in the comments pointed out, if you want to make a 'usable' prototype board, you use copper strand wire affixed with epoxy to emulate the tracks, not solder, for reasons that were very obvious in the video - no amount of epoxy will make that thing last a test drive, harmonics and heat from the voltage regulators will likely destroy it in minutes. A proper etch resist prototype board could be reused repeatedly with enough bodge wires and track cuts and wouldn't shake itself to bits as soon as you look at it.

This is just immensely stupid, but as noted, because people think electronics are magical, they think this is amazing - people in the comments saying WOW PCBWAY WILL BE QUAKING IN THEIR BOOTS

Motherfucker, PCBWay will link to this video as a demonstration as to why they exist in the first place.

"It took them 18 months and thousands of pounds to make this incredibly fragile board. Learn KiCAD, give us the resultant Gerber file file we'll have a reliable, easy to handle board with proper vias and etch resist that you can solder to directly, in your hands, in 72 hours for forty quid".

Not more Binky but Richard sitting down with the Retropower channel for a chat.


Some interesting stuff, very little discussion of the catastrophic delays as you'd expect.

Grit your teeth and persist after the "Singer is just a bunch of guys in a shed" and the doubling down thereof. If you can.

This channel seems to have monetisation set to EXTREME though and the ads were particularly disruptive.

TLDW in answer to "What will you finish this year"? "We will finish the Mini, it's nearly finished, we've only a few things left to do..." at 1:13:47

There's a new episode!

I certainly didn’t expect to see this thread bumped so soon.

I fast forwarded most of that. My interest levels have been hit hard by their recent rate of progress….

I'm not even wasting my time with it TBH.

I presume it'll be the usual level of huffing their own farts over how so very clever they are for making no practical progress while guzzling up patreon money.

In the meantime, no Escargot updates for five years, and that Xpower SV shell has probably rotted away somewhere.

It's just fucking boring.

Xpower shell was carbon fibre non?

I flicked through it in 5 mins. They spent a lot of time for pretty average results. And that circuit board still looks more fragile than soap bubble.

I would still have just thrown in the AIM dashboard and called it done.

That circuit board is going to shake itself loose the first time it goes down a track.

Simon wrote: Wed Apr 30, 2025 7:56 am Xpower shell was carbon fibre non?

Think that's the case, pretty sure the Qvale Mangusta floorpan it rests on is steel, though.

(I can't remember if it's just the bodywork or if it's a floor/chassis they have too - it's been something like five years since they mentioned it, if they're not going to put the effort in why should I? )

scotta wrote: Wed Apr 30, 2025 8:52 am I would still have just thrown in the callum dashboard and called it done.

That circuit board is going to shake itself loose the first time it goes down a track.

Pretty sure they could have used someone like PCBWay to get a proper custom PCB sorted. There might even be scope to productionise stuff like this so people could make their own Binky or for the Mini modding community in general.

Delphi wrote: Wed Apr 30, 2025 1:44 pm
Pretty sure they could have used someone like PCBWay to get a proper custom PCB sorted.

It's such a crazy departure - PCB's are a completely tried and tested solution to connect your electrickery items together in harsh environments (frozen, hot, humid) and use cases (vibration and shock loads) - I can only see future problems for the completely untested (from that perspective) solder-dribbling process they've decided to go with instead.

(we really need a shaking head bemusedly emoji)

scotta wrote: Wed Apr 30, 2025 8:52 am I would still have just thrown in the AIM dashboard and called it done.

That circuit board is going to shake itself loose the first time it goes down a track.

ETA AIM. Fucking autouncorrect.