Originally Posted by Borlax

In the middle of the circuit board there are another set of soldering pads, what are these for?. Anyone knows?.

ICSP

For those that are still wondering what that means:

I - In
C - Circuit
S - Serial
P - Programming

Or some variation on the theme. Manufacturers seem to twist the words around a lot, but it all comes down to in circuit programming of some sort. Atmel uses ISP, Microchip ICSP, and I forget what Cypress calls it, but they all do the same job (but with different tools).

Nice, now we only need someone who can make a serial interface connection, so the new code can be read, and programmed into the old boards.

I wonder how "old" the old boards are? I bought my VAPOR straight from Horizon in mid November and it has an "old" board.
Ron

Do you all think the Female side of a micro-jst connector (like is used on the AR6300) would fit those solder pads of channels 4 and 5?

Are they thru-hole or would it need to be surface mount?

That would make it uber-easy to use those channels.

no go with through-the-hole components unless you bend their legs and make them SMD

Originally Posted by dmitrygr

no go with through-the-hole components unless you bend their legs and make them SMD

Can do! I don't have one of the bricks in front of me, are they 1.5mm center-to-center?

Originally Posted by dmitrygr

ICSP

I do not think that is correct. My notes are at home but I recall that the ICSP connections are just pads on the other side (opposite of the servos) and the 4 pin connector between the servos is for an unknown (to me) use. If you trace out where the connections go on the MCU, you can determine which connections are for ICSP.

Are we saying the 3 pads are + - and signal there. So far I've just ran the signal from the noted pad and the + and - from the battery leads. Would be alot easier to run the servo leads for me anyway off the pads.

Went back and reread

Originally Posted by dmitrygr

i hope you did not connect servo to the 3 pads on the board
i said: only the signal pad is guranteed to be useful. connect that to servo signal, and power it from the battery connectors on the vapor brick. it worked with a standard blue servo for me on both channels. By the way, there are TWO vapor board revisions. There is a square one(early) and a rectangular one(like the one in my picture, later ones). I did not test this on a square one (don't have one)

Originally Posted by mrfliboy

Are we saying the 3 pads are + - and signal there. So far I've just ran the signal from the noted pad and the + and - from the battery leads. Would be alot easier to run the servo leads for me anyway off the pads.

Went back and reread

Double check with an ohm meter - but I think that is correct. It looks like the SMD version of the AR6300 servo connector will just go on there. Disclaimer: I'm saying this from memory - all my notes are at home and I'm not.

The LEFT connectors does provide all 3 needed pins, the right one does NOT

Should be +voltage - signal - minus to be a direct plug in for the micro JST servos. I could have that backwards to, might be -signal+, or maybe +-signal, there are about three different types and I need to compare to a known servo every time I do work on these things. All I know is if you get the connector flipped something burns.

And yes it is backwards from normal servo, don't blame me, I didn't design it.

Folks:

It looks like the centre pins for the extra servo jacks has a jumper so the right servo jack can at least get that signal. Whether it is - or + doesn't matter because it's the centre pin. You can see the jumper point just to the right of the centre pin on the pic in the first post. Do the upper-left and lower-right pins carry the same signal? If so, then shorting that jumper should make them both 'socket ready'.

nitebat

I can't wait till you guys get this stuff all figured out. Great thread. Good luck. I'm good at soldering when I know where to! So I'm stoked!

Originally Posted by Borlax

In the middle of the circuit board there are another set of soldering pads, what are these for?

You know, those pads are outlined in silkscreen exactly like what's around these newly found channels 4 & 5.

I bet a SMD micro-jst connector (but with 4 pins) will fit there too, if anyone finds it useful to hook to those pads.