Email or username:

Password:

Forgot your password?
Top-level
niconiconi

UL sucks too. Their Recognized Component certificates are essentially useless. All they tell you is a certification exists, but without any information about the rated working conditions, which are critical to safety. A vendor can say its power supply works up to 1000 volts, and claims the power supply is also UL certified (without telling you it's certified only for 100 volts, the 1000 volts spec is only a functional rating and cannot be used for safety-critical applications).

The real information is in UL's Conditions of Acceptability, and it's often nowhere to be found. You can either try asking the vendor nicely and hope they don't ignore your request. Or pay (possibly thousands of dollars?) to purchase that information from UL. ledsmagazine.com/company-newsf #electronics

4 comments
niconiconi replied to niconiconi

PCB ordered. Added common-mode chokes at both sides of the isolated converter hopefully to suppress some noise across the barrier. Also removed the slot - the SIP DCDC module only has functional isolation, so increasing the creepage distance further is pointless... #electronics

USB isolator board. The board is symmetrically laid out, left is the host side, right is the device side, with an isolation barrier in between.
Back side of the PCB. A few SMD capacitors and resistors. And a "Let's All Love Lain" on the silkscreen.
niconiconi replied to niconiconi

Hopefully I won't accidentally kill myself later in the dielectric withstand voltage test by the 3000 volts HiPot tester. LIke many on the Fediverse, ihatebeinga.live is a thing, but a HiPot tester is just a terrible way to die. #electronics

DANGER
DO NOT TOUCH

Not only will this kill you, it will hurt the whole time you are dying.
niconiconi replied to niconiconi

My USB 2.0 isolation board is working. The Texas Instruments chip ISOUSB211 works as advertised, it really is the first USB 2.0 high-speed (480 Mbps) galvanic isolation chip on the open market. I'll release all the design files tomorrow. #electronics #usb

USB isolator board. The board is symmetrically laid out, left is the host side, right is the device side, with an isolation barrier in between. Across the barrier is a Texas Instruments ISOUSB211 isolated USB repeater chip, and also a DCDC power converter module.
Benchmark result using a USB flash drive. The read speed is 45 MiB/s, or 360 Mbps, this speed implies the isolator is working properly in high-speed USB mode.
niconiconi replied to niconiconi

TI ISOUSB211 development board design is now public. This TI chip is the first ASIC capable of doing USB 2.0 High-Speed (480 Mbps, not 12 Mbps) galvanic isolation on the open market. As always, #Lain must be loved. notabug.org/niconiconi/isousb2 #electronics #usb

USB isolator board. The board is symmetrically laid out, left is the host side, right is the device side, with an isolation barrier in between. Across the barrier is a Texas Instruments ISOUSB211 isolated USB repeater chip, and also a DCDC power converter module.
Back side of the PCB, there are only a few resistors and capacitors on this side. On the silkscreen there's a sketch image of Lain, with the words "Let's all love Lain"
Go Up