:x
As part of my openSX70 project I finally took the plunge and order a PCBA.
I place my USD388 order on 2018-03-28 and DHL delivered 2018-05-07 which is I guess is about the 25 working days advertised.
The board is basically a special-purpose Arduino. When I received I immediately loaded the bootloader via the FTDI port and a custom pogo-pins gig:
No problem. So I loaded a very simple sketch “blinck” and again perfect. I just had notice that one of the ten boards had a few bridges on the FPC connector. That is no big deal, I can remove it myself with wick.
So next I did the next thing I do. Test the build-in lightmeter on the bottom side of the .6 board. It didn’t initialize… hummm strange. But who knows maybe I had something wrong on the skectch, didn’t think much of it (and should have).
So now I upload my main sketch and nothing: the thing freezes and is totally unresponsive. So finally after two hours of serial debugging i realize what I already knew: the BH1750 doesn’t initialize. BOOMER.
I am quite a newby in this PCB/PCBA thing, so I wanted to make sure that everything was ok before placing the order. So previously I ordered the exact same PCB and hand build a prototype. The BH1750 is 6-pin .5mm pitch. Really hard (for me) to hand solder. But I managed to do it in at least one board and it worked. So I inmediately look at the chip on the PCBA boards.
To my horror the chip was placed all wrong. I have placed the dot indicating the pin1 location, but it is still hard, not hard but you have to be careful, to place it right. At least for me.
So here I have this bunch of PCBA that are basically -not totally useless- but very limited.
I also want to note that I used AO3404 mosfet. Mainly for the low profile, since I have tight tolerances with the placement of the board: Seeed has replaced those for other, a bit bigger and taller, for which I don’t even find the datasheet. But it seems to work. Not perfect.
But here is my BIG COMPLAINT, up to this point I am disappointed but, you know, things happen. What I am really disappointed is that I sent an email on same day I got the boards explaining everything, with pictures, and SEEED has NOT replied to me. I have also contacted the “chat” twice, again, absolutely no reply!!
C’MON GUYS, I would have been ok at that time with a “we hear you, we are looking into it” or something,
Now I feel that Seeed does not care about my boards, or about my business… IT HAS BEEN 5 DAYS WITH ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OR NOTHING FROM SEEED. I really really wanted to keep this to myself a solve it quietly and privately.
Hello Joaco,
Thank you for sharing your experience and apologies for the distress caused. I have checked the general support and the last message we received from you was on the 2nd of April regarding a coupon code. Could you let me know if you sent it to our general support or otherwise? Would you mind sending it again to [email protected]? And we’ll get to the bottom of this.
Ordering boards from Chinese manufacturers is the right choice and they often get the job done pretty well. I custom made my own circuit board from FS PCBA and it is awesome.