Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
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One 3-V CR2032 lithium battery
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One CR2032 battery holder
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A small PCB
I want to bring your attention to the SO-8 adapter. In my haste to get an RTC built for the Raspberry Pi,
I just grabbed the first SO-8 adapter plate I saw. Unfortunately for me, no matter what way I placed this into my
breadboards, it shorted out some of the pins. This means I had to use jumper wire to connect up my adapter board;
it works fine but it's very ugly. Ideally you would want one row of pins on each bank of the breadboard with the RTC
chip sitting dead center in between them. This will allow for easy and clean writing. With that in mind I will start by
soldering the RTC to the adapter board.
Soldering the Adapter Board
There are two tools I need for SMT soldering jobs:
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A set of handy hands, as seen in Figure
8-3
Figure 8-3.
Handy hands: a very handy addition
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A good thin desoldering wick
My set of handy hands also comes with a small magnifying glass; even if you don't use this to solder with it's a
real smart idea to check your work with it after you're done.
Take a look at my completed adapter and the DS1338Z-33 sitting next to it in Figure
8-4
. It's quite small. Sometimes
these little chips are a real pain to grab. For this I use tweezers: there are special SMT tweezers you can use or you can
use the everyday cheap ones as I do.
