| After the last post on Selin translator availability, I decided to see what I can put together. As for the cable connectors I was worried about. The ones Agent X found on AliExpress worked great. Shipping took forever, but they did show up. Did a piece-meal prototype with the selected components on breakout boards and go the firmware ironed out. Once that was done, I put together a quick first pass prototype PCB layout and recently got that back and assembled. Everything is working except the DAC. I soon discovered that I had accidentally biased a chip select pin for the DAC with a higher than recommended voltage. My bad. I’m just going to move that chip select pin to another output and splice in a patch to validate functionality. Hopefully tomorrow. As an alternative, I’m also looking at a completely analog solution. So far, the spice simulations have been encouraging and I’ll probably layout a prototype board for that soon. You may be wondering why I’d be pursuing this option as well. The answer comes down to cost. The digital solution is nickel and diming me on parts, while the analog approach gives me some headroom to keep this from pricing itself out. FWIW, I will be using all AEC(automotive) rated components (ICs and passives) as well as adding protection features, like reverse bias protection and such. More to come soon hopefully.
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