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+Title: [Update] Jolly Christmas Decoration
+Category: Blog
+Date: 2015-11-27 15:30
+Tags: /dev/diary, hardware
+
+You might remember I played around with Kicad a few months ago and made this [tacky little thing](/hardware/jolly-christmas-decoration/). Just about 2 1/2 weeks ago I went onto [DirtyPCB](http://dirtypcbs.com/) to get them actually made. I wanted to have gone through the production process and get something built before I started doing more complicated projects.
+
+Unfortunately I discovered a little mistake with the design in the layout that ended up at the manufacturer (Rev 3.1). I tried to fix them but Rev 3.2 didn't make it in time, which means my boards will be a bit more complicated to power. However not too complicated as the power-in are just throughholes so I can actually strap anything behind it to power it.
+
+But without further a due, here is the result from DirtyPCB (which I am actually quite impressed with).
+
+![PCB with Banana for Scale](/images/christmas_bauble_pcb.jpg)
+
+Now, I'm new to all of this so I started doing beep-tests on the pads to make sure things were properly connected and all the boards passed them. The production quality is pretty good. Unfortunately I can't start assembling them yet just because none of the parts I ordered for them have arrived yet. The manufacture and shipping of the boards actually beat the shipping of off-the-shelf parts!
+
+Anyways, I'm kinda excited. First time making an electronics project. I might post another update on when the parts arive and post a few gifs of the finished products. If I don't I'll probably tweet about it though.
+
+Now, I have another smaller electronics project in the making where I am, again, waiting for parts to arrive to do some testing. And already designing a modular PCB board. (Limited a bit with the 10x10cm limitations on DirtyPCB I need to design my project in a way that I can take a bunch of smaller panels and stick them together into a large one, which would take hundreds of dollars to make elsewhere).
+
+[But realistically for the production quality I saw with these, I'd be happy to give them my money again for future projects. Especially at that price, just unbeatable.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d36wUmJGzvA)
+
+😊
+
+Anyways, enough ramblings. Read you later.
+
+# Update...update
+
+Right...so after tinkering with the bauble a bit I found out a few things. The most important one being that I made some mistakes. Some big ones :)
+
+- Pin 9 of the shift register was connected to both input A and input B of the XOR gate. Which meant that both inputs were always the same...which also meant that the output was always 0.
+- The 555-timer clock ran at several hundred kilohertz. I had to change the capacitor down to ~12µF and the resistors to ~4.7 ohms.
+- The coin-cell battery didn't have enough juice to run it. Two had to be put in parallel. Even then, two batteries would not be able to run for very long.
+
+To make the bauble work I bridget the xor gate completely, so just feeding back the shift register end to the beginning.
+
+In addition to those things some of the LED's sometimes didn't work. I'm not sure if that is due to broken shift registers, traces or LEDs. All in all I do consider it to have tought me quite a lot about electronics, going through the process of producing a PCB and debugging electronics once it arrived and inevidably goes wrong :)
+
+I am currently in the process of redesigning the entire circuite from scratch. And making it easier to solder. I want to make it into a beginner soldering kit that people can both learn how to solder with and also have something to hang off their christmas tree in the jolly season.