How To Make A Pogo Pin Test Jig
How To Make A Pogo Pin Test Jig
If you end up buying a pick and place to assemble PCBs (or even if you're doing it by hand) you'll need to test out your
boards! If you have an assembler do it for you, its still probably a good idea to have a jig you can give them. A good jig
will tell you whats going right and whats going wrong.
In this tutorial I will show how I designed a very basic jig with a "tested good" audible indicator. The board its testing is
very simple but the basic premise can be expanded to large projects with ease.
The spring-loaded ('pogo') pins I prefer are about 0.5" long and have a spear point. They also fit snugly into 'standard'
0.035" (0.9mm) drill holes so they are easy to insert and stand up straight. We now carry these pogo pins in the
Adafruit shop! (http://adafru.it/394) They're called "P75-LM" type, you can also pick them up on ebay. I don't use the
socket holders because - well - I dont. But if you're buidling something that will be used for a long time by clumsy
people its probably a good idea.
This board already has 4 x 2-56 sized mounting holes so its easy to attach standoffs.
Choose the standoffs so that the tips of the pogo pins are above the standoff part but below the end of the screw.
Mark and drill the mounting holes - four in this case. Luckily (or on purpose???) I placed the mounting holes on 0.1"
boundaries.
https://adafru.it/Euf
https://adafru.it/Euf
/*
SD card breakout tester!
Uses fat16lib's fantastic FAT library
tests:
1. CD pin works (goes low when card inserted)
2. 3.3V LDO output is in proper range
3. Can communicate with card
*/
#include <SD.h>
Sd2Card card;
void setup() {
// initialize the digital pin as an output:
Serial.begin(9600);
void loop()
{
Serial.println("waiting for SD card detect");
while (digitalRead(CD)) {
Serial.print('.');
delay(100);
}
Serial.println("Detected Card!");
delay(1000);
Beep!
(We totally saw this and stole the idea from someone online but we can't find the link anymore, sorry!)
The plastic pieces hold down the PCB against the pogo bed. This tester, when used with a little batch script, performs
the following test:
1. Reprograms the board's fuses and flash with a bootloader (via the ISP port). For this part we're using the Arduino
as an ISP programmer (there's a sketch that does this)
2. The computer then bootloads (via USB) a pin-by-pin testing program
3. Once the board indicates the test completed, the computer erases the testing program