Adding Surface Mount Power to IOIO

Some career-oriented things have kept me largely out of the Bad Lab. I finally decided to dust of the soldering station and get a permanent power connector surface mounted to my IOIO board.

I tackled this project before I headed to work…I think the pre-coffee pre-jitter scenario worked out well. Anyhow, this is the component from SparkFun:

surface mount power jack
tiny surface mount is tiny

It is a simple two pin surface mount compact connector. Nice current rating, so I am hoping it will give me enough juice to pull 5V in my pull-up project.

The issue to overcome in the actual soldering was keeping this little sucker in place and stable to get the first joint in place. My solution, once again, ended up involving my adjustable clamps. These things are great, especially compared to the ‘helper hands’ alligator clip stand. Wonky hands would be more apt.

clampy
+2 clamps

For a little connector, it seems to be fairly secure. I also picked up a barrel jack to two pin connector from SparkFun.

mount surface
surface mount mounted

Hooked up to a wall wart…survey says:

ioio power
power-ed up

We have power. I will test it against some loads, and get back on the pull-up project. Here goes nothing…

Open Drain Example IOIO Android

Hi.

This project never ends.

I have been cutting my teeth on some electrical engineering 101, in an effort to push 5V through my IOIO. At this point, I am still not able to report a success.

I do have the ‘open drain’ setup working, at a lower voltage than I am intending. My configuration is as follows:

pull up resistor
pulling up to 5V

The Java snippet that is doing the pin defining is this guy:

DigitalOutput out = ioio.openDigitalOutput(25, DigitalOutput.Spec.Mode.OPEN_DRAIN, true);

The only issue is with my setup…for some reason, my circuit isn’t able to pull to 5V. See the DMM readout v

almost there
so close...

So, back to the drawing board. When the switch is open via my app, the pull up resister should settle Vout to 5V. The other half of the scenario is fully functional, as a closed switch grounds as intended.

My next plan of attack involves a more permanent power source, and I have placed my order with SparkFun for a surface mount / wall wart combo that will do the trick. I am hoping that my issue is with the power, but time will (shortly) tell if this is the case.

Stay tuned. Getting close on this one…