Is there an area for hardware items?

[keithdoxey]

I searched through the whole thing and found the ground trace was incomplete.

Glad you found it

First don't panic about fault conditions occurring in the wee hours.

Slight correction to that statement.....

Dont panic about fault conditions occuring after you have been working for too long !

I doubt there is a single person on this list who hasnt made an error due to tiredness or distraction.

I think my worst error was when I was repairing a turntable that had a faulty transformer. I was wiring in a temporary replacement when someone distracted me. When I continued I joined up the wrong wires and stuffed 240V mains straight into the PCB that was supposed to take 20V AC.

Not ALL the IC's exploded... some just blistered... but the turntable had to go to that great disco in the sky

[mugwamp]

I think my worst error was when I was repairing a turntable that had a faulty transformer. I was wiring in a temporary replacement when someone distracted me. When I continued I joined up the wrong wires and stuffed 240V mains straight into the PCB that was supposed to take 20V AC.

Not ALL the IC's exploded... some just blistered... but the turntable had to go to that great disco in the sky

My favorite was accidentally reversing the power leads on the pc board for a new project. I (and a whole room full of people) hit the floor thinking it was gunshots when the electrolytic capacitors exploded.

[PJALM]

Its also a good idea to use .1uF caps at the pic instead of the 1uF, .1uF seems to be the industry standard for decoupling. I use them on every ic on my boards and i also use them between any external i/o and gnd. I find this filters out all ac noise I receive on cables going to sensors etc. I also use ferites on the input power and power lines between boards. They are probable not necessary but I don't like to take any chances when building Idustrial Controllers because you can get a lot of noise from the motors etc.