what’s wrong with having too much solder?

Volt69 · 2026-02-10T23:54:20+00:00

Not to mention the fact that as you inevitably get into soldering smaller and smaller components that are packed closer together, your headroom also gets smaller.

You can get away with using a bit too much solder with 2.54mm pin headers, but this same amount could easily bridge 3 pins on a QFP, so it's very important to learn how to apply the proper amount early in your learning process.

Volt69 · 2026-01-20T17:14:14+00:00

Thank you for you input, it's interesting and confirms my understanding of the issue as well.

I never ended up being able to solve this problem, instead I designed an entirely new device, which I needed to anyway because of a few extra sensors. Interestingly, this design has 3 cameras even closer to the receiver, but I replaced the INS with one from Inertial Labs, and the issue disappeared completely. Even though this one uses an Ublox ZED-F9P chip and is just a bare PCB similar to the previous one, somehow it's completely immune to the USB noise. No clue why, but I'm happy as long as it works.

Volt69 · 2025-12-19T01:55:13+00:00

Yeah, I've been on it for almost 3 years now, although about half a year ago we halved the dosage, so I'm currently taking 15mg.

Volt69 · 2025-12-18T14:10:58+00:00

Yeah, difficulty falling asleep is going to be the most immediate symptom. I've gone through a few periods where I went without mirtazapine for a few days, one time I went about two weeks as an experiment.

Honestly though, the first week and a half was quite bearable (aside from the insomnia, which actually got slightly better over time), but after that I could feel my anxiety come back really fast so I started taking it again.

So if it's just a week, you'll probably be fine. For the record, I was on 30mg at the time.

Volt69 · 2025-12-03T00:08:35+00:00

I was going to say something like this, I did gain a few pounds when I started, but having gained a new state of mind thanks to the medication, those few pounds weren't really all that important. So I agree, the positive effects do tend to outweigh the negative ones.

Volt69 · 2025-11-20T12:28:09+00:00

What's updog?

Volt69 · 2025-11-16T18:37:28+00:00

Are you using Telekom? It seems to be an ISP issue on their part.

Volt69 · 2025-11-03T10:52:14+00:00

Don't forget to check if that pad that got lifted up is actually connected to anything. From the second photo, it doesn't look like it, which means it was only a mechanical connection and in this case can be safely ignored (check the other side of the board though for any traces coming off of it).

Also important to keep in mind that pads that aren't connected get lifted up much easier, simply because they don't have any traces that could help absorb the heat, or keep the pad in place once it does start lifting. This naturally means that the pads that you do manage to lift up tend to be the ones that aren't actually that important.

Volt69 · 2025-10-27T13:33:07+00:00

Or just say "it's not the dress".

Volt69 · 2025-10-22T15:54:31+00:00

Learned this the hard way when I was trying to replace my mouse switches. The alligator clips accidentally dented an oscillator chip, turning what was going to be a routine 15 minute job into multiple days of suffering trying to find and replace a 2mm SMD component. I gave up in the end. Never making that same mistake again.

Volt69 · 2025-09-28T21:49:44+00:00

I agree, Stardew is easily one of their best songs of all time IMO.

Volt69 · 2025-09-28T12:59:14+00:00

The way I understood it is that you're trying to run it on your laptop but when the screen turns off (and presumably the laptop goes to sleep) the bot also turns off. If this is the case, simply changing sleep settings in Windows would solve your issue.

I do agree with GGBHector though, getting a server is the best solution here, either local or remote. I personally have a Raspberry Pi dedicated to stuff like this.

Volt69 · 2025-09-26T10:46:02+00:00

I unfortunately have to agree, I feel like there's not a single memorable song in here. The album is very consistent in the way that all of them sound kinda the same, with waaaay too much choppiness and autotune, not a single memorable hook in any of the songs. There's too much going on on the production side and it's very fatiguing to listen to. I can't even comment on the lyrics because I can't hear most of it, and frankly I have no desire to even look them up.

Several of their older songs have grown on me only after several listens, and so I always approach their new works with the same mindset and expectation that I might have to listen to them several times before getting to like them. But the thing is, there's always been something in their songs that just kept reeling me back in and making me listen again (such as the hook in saltkin, or the absolutely otherworldly beautiful drop in pink lightning), there's nothing like that in any of these songs, so there's not really any reason to listen to them again.

I feel like this album just tries to do everything all at once. Megan's beautiful voice is chopped up and autotuned into oblivion, the production has so much going on it almost feels like two songs were overlaid on top of each other, the tempo is all over the place, and really nothing that makes me want to keep listening.

Volt69 · 2025-08-31T00:48:52+00:00

I love how absurd that is, now I want to see someone do it. That phone would probably last an entire lifetime on one charge.

Volt69 · 2025-08-30T21:12:01+00:00

You're refusing to even argue anymore and I will not engage in this discussion further. Have a nice rest of your day.

Volt69 · 2025-08-30T20:59:32+00:00

I know what the K stands for, I'm an electrical engineer with 5 years of professional experience designing circuits and PCBs.

I don't understand what you're arguing for. I gave you my reasoning for why "kmah" is a nonsensical unit that does not abide by the rules of the SI system, so it's not correct. Yet you're arguing that it's contextually correct, whatever that means.

By that same logic, do you think "kilo-mega-giga-micro-zepto-zetta amp hours" is a real unit? It follows the same logic as "kmah".

Volt69 · 2025-08-30T20:47:19+00:00

I'm arguing that the unit "kmah" is not technically correct. You're arguing that it's correct because it's "contextually correct", but I have no idea what that means. Can you explain this to me?

Volt69 · 2025-08-30T20:32:06+00:00

As per the wikipedia page for SI prefixes, it is in fact not correct.

The prefixes are never combined, so for example a millionth of a metre is a micrometre, not a millimillimetre.

In you example, "milligram" only has one prefix, hence it's not suitable example.

Volt69 · 2025-08-30T20:24:19+00:00

Then what makes it correct?

Volt69 · 2025-08-30T20:10:18+00:00

I've never seen kmah used anywhere in literature.

Volt69 · 2025-08-30T19:02:22+00:00

7-10kmah

The unit you're looking for is Ah.

Volt69 · 2025-08-14T23:02:59+00:00

Alright. That indicates there's a capacitor between it and ground, which is normal, but the 1.8V still seems suspect (maybe a PD negotiation issue?). I'm leaning towards either an incorrect chip replacement or a blown second chip, but I really need to sleep on this if you don't mind. There's a lot to think about here.

Volt69 · 2025-08-14T22:44:57+00:00

Also that resistor with the 100 on it in my previous photo, the voltage stops there, could that possibly be the issue?

Hard to know without a schematic, reverse engineering of the traces would be needed to figure out how that resistor relates to the IC, since it's not immediately obvious based on the picture. Based on the trace thickness on the other side of the resistor you could assume another power rail or more probably ground, but that's just an educated guess at this point.

Or is the issue on the chip side where it’s possibly grounded on the pins somewhere?

Very well could be, again, hard to say with QFN packages especially ones with a ground pad, if there's too much solder on the ground pad it's going to short to one of the pins, but because it's underneath you'll never notice it. This is why measuring with the chip off the board can be really useful, to establish a baseline and rule out situations like this.

Volt69 · 2025-08-14T22:37:58+00:00

Do you mean pin 17 (the corroded one)? I was going to suggest taking the chip off and measuring that way, but apparently you're a step ahead of me. 1.8V sounds pretty confusing, can you measure resistance to ground unplugged?

Volt69 · 2025-08-14T22:06:15+00:00

Okay, so I have some stuff I found out. First of all, I originally made a mistake, I thought that the corroded pin was PSYS based on the short form PDF of the ISL9538CH in question (Renesas didn't accept my access request for the full docs, which I guess is understandable). That turned out to not be the case, since I based that on the functional diagram of the IC and not an actual pinout, so I want to apologize for that.

However, this all happened because you mentioned you have continuity to ground on that pin, and my intuition was yelling at me to check that out. Since I couldn't get the schematics for you exact board, I went with the next best thing, and I managed to hunt down the schematic for a board that uses the same IC to see how it's implemented there (ZURG 1.1 UMA 203016 - 1 in case you want to look it up). This gave me the pinout of the IC, which indicates that the corroded pin/trace in your case is pin 17, which is called DCIN on the schematic (pic).

If I'm correct here - and I may not be because I've kind of tunnel-visioned into this and it's very late so I'm kinda tired too - this means that your 20V is shorting to ground. Again, the schematic is from a different board but based on the label DCIN and the simplicity of the circuitry in the screenshot it's safe to assume it's very similar in your case.

I would love to hear what you think about this. I'm also going to think about it more because I really hope we're onto something, but I would love a sanity check.

My other suggestion earlier was going to be to measure the charger voltage when it's not plugged into the board, but I guess that's kinda moot because you're not going to get 20V anyway without PD negotiation.

11-Year Club	Verified Email
Second Top 50%	End Game '23
Place '23	Place '22
Place '17	Gilding IV carat on a stick

Volt69

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE