Soldering wires to the board qualifies as fiddling 
Holly Sh…t !
I would say this is a disaster waiting to happen. Soldered wire joints especially ones that soldered to SMD pads are prone to vibration fatigue. It will fly for a while then plunge to the ground and hopefully will not kill anybody in the process.
If you really need to solder to the pads, secure the wires with a dab of silicone glue (preferably with a non acetic acid version) to the board.
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I have had SOOOO many cables fail, that soldering to pads should not be considered an issue. Connectors have the same problem… Constant vibrations causes the wires to fail at their crimp points. I’ve actually had a lot more issues w/ connectors/cables than with soldered wires.
Now I’ll admit, those above pics are a mess, but soldering directly to pads is not an issue. I’ve never had one fail… I have had the wires fail at the point the hard solder stops and the wires begin to flex, but as I said above, I have that same issue w/ crimps.
Actually I’m looking at a few 4 or 5 year old copters sitting here, and every single one w/ connectors has wires falling out. My old auav x2 w/ soldered connections are all fine.
The silicone glue is great advice, though. I’ve actually put that on the back end of a lot of my connectors for the issues I was just mentioning.
There is a whole science behind cable joints A good crimped connector which holds the insulation as well always better than a soldered connection.
But thus is just my opinion.
The sockets are simply SMD soldered to the PCB anyway… same potential point of failure there… Plus you’re adding the connectors and crimps as additional points of failure. My experience has always been that crimped cables fail… even ones that were hardly flown seem to have somehow popped apart just sitting on the shelf for four years.
My old pixhawk cables are bad. On the one I’m looking at here, hasn’t been flown for over a year, the telemetry port has a broken wire. But my pixracer cables are horrible… Almost very connector has broken wires at the crimps. This is two pixracers I’m looking at. One from the original manufacturer, and one of the newer ones from mrobotics.
Anyway, like you said, this is just my opinion… I’m a fan of directly soldered.
Proper pre-flight checks of all the critical wires is an important step before any session. That’s the best answer for this issue.
-Quick edit, most of these boards w/ SMD pads have little holes going through the PCB anyway for extra strength… They usually aren’t just smooth pads. You can see that in the close up photo he posted above, in the row of smd pads on the right side.
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Unfortunately on that Kakute F7 AIO, there are a few pads without holes. SDA/SCL is particularly frustrating - just two very tiny surface pads for the compass interface.
Well the photo I posted it was when I build it
Now isn’t much better but all the wires goes where they have to be
If I will take out the top plate I will take a photo
The hot glue is a good solution
Thank you
Now have my FC working with compass and gps 
Now im stuck with my firmware not having the ability to display VBAT 
Anyone know a work around or am i stuck with this board not being able to display battery voltage ?
It should work, the nano version does.
BATT_MONITOR (3)
BATT_VOLT_PIN (12)
A workaround would be from ESC Telemetry if yours support it.
Cheers dave, will try it now
Excellent, now working thanks a million
I do agree with the discussion about soldering and crimping (@wicked1, @Eosbandi). Coming from a software background I am just bad at soldering and getting this right in the first place. Both soldering directly to the board or crimping (arduino style) seems to be a pain for me. I am not happy about soldering directly as I prefer testing with different pinouts etc., but I never found a good way of using connectors either. I like jst type connectors. After soldering a board its kind of destroyed. If any of you have a good procedure for getting this right, please let me know.
I have done quite a lot of testing with the omnibusv6 (not nano), and below are most of the details for setting it up based on my earlier pull request. I haven’t got to help out with the board description yet, but I did write it up back then. It’s quite similar to the nano but with some differences.
It is nice with the JST pins for GPS/COMPASS (per previous comment as I always get the soldering wrong). I have tested with a benewake lidar and esp8266 (wemos) for connection to ground station (so the board runs with all these plus gps/compass).
Board Connections (per March 2019 on master)
GPS (enabling use of the 6 pin JST for GPS/COMPASS)
SERIAL3_PROTOCOL # USART6
COMPASS (scl/sda at the default 6 pin JST)
Telemetry
SERIAL2_PROTOCOL # USART4
Available UART (lidar, GSC etc)
SERIAL4_PROTOCOL # USART3
RC input to be soldered to LED PIN (compatible with RX serial protocols).
Servos S5-S6 are available for use
Current/Voltage monitoring:
-
BLHeli32:
BATT_MONITOR 9
BATT_VOLT_PIN -1
BATT_CURR_PIN -1 -
ADC battery monitor:
BATT_MONITOR 4 (Analog Voltage and Current)
BATT_VOLT_PIN 12
BATT_CURR_PIN 11
BATT_VOLT_MULT 11.0
BATT_AMP_PERVOLT 38.0
RSSI
Option 1: RSSI_TYPE 2 (RX RSSI Analog input from receivers (Frsky etc.))
RSSI_CHANNEL (set to the channel number output from the receiveer, for example 16)
Using usart3 to connect to GS
SERIAL4_PROTOCOL 2
SERIAL4_BAUDRATE 921600
Connect to wifi, select UDP and 921600 Baud and connect.
To enable logging, set LOG_BACKEND_TYPE to 4
order of UARTs
UART_ORDER OTG1 USART6 USART1 UART4 USART3
Serial ports
R1/T1 -> USART1
R6/T6 -> USART6
R3/T3 -> USART3
R4 -> UART4 (only RX)
Wow, this is pretty much everything i need to know.
Thanks alot.
Soldering is simply a skill that takes practice. I used to hand build analog synths with thousands of components. My early modules were a mess… Wires all over the place, cold joints, too much solder, etc. I got a lot better over the years… I soldered for several hours a day for years and years.
A decent soldering iron w/ temperature control helps a lot… But I went about 10 years w/ a basic 40 watt weller. In that case, it runs hot, so you’ve got to be quick w/ your joints. I recently got a little battery powered TS100 to put in my field repair kit, and it’s great!! Fully temperature controlled. I use it more than my bench top temperature controlled iron now.
I doubt I’m telling you anything you don’t already know, but for these FC’s, soldering wires to pads, you simply pre-tin your pad and your wire. Then hold the wire on the pad, touch the iron to it, and it’s done. Basically, don’t try holding a fresh wire on a bare pad and heat and apply solder at the same time. Having narrow solder helps, too, because you don’t need much. And a narrow tip for your iron for these small boards.
The bigger power and motor pads, especially the grounds, can be a challenge because they soak up some heat… I generally switch to a bigger tip and let it preheat for a while before I solder the bigger pads that might be connected to a ground plane or something.
You want the joint to heat up fast, w/in about a second, and then take the iron off as soon as it’s melted.
If a board is basically destroyed after soldering you’re using too much heat and/or too much time.
I swap soldered wires around on boards all the time, and it just takes a second to move a wire… Tap the iron on the wire and it’s off. Tap the iron on the wire on the new pad and it’s done.
But we all make mistakes… I recently overheated a pad on my omnibus nano, and it fell off the board. Luckily it has duplicate pads on the other side.
This is how I spent my youth:
This one is mine, so it’s a bit of a mess… The ones I built for other people were neater. The bottom left black modules were a kit I got when I was about 15, and that started all of this electronics madness. All the silver modules were designed and built by me. Anyway, the point of all this is practice practice practice…
I am very impressed by what you have done with the synths, @wicked1 . The amount of soldering required there looks daunting. I bet you know the vacuum tubes and filtering technology too.
Yes, it is a skill and it takes practice. I am not too bad, but would have liked to have better procedures for prototyping. Thanks for the advice. I may get that TS100 too.
Heh, yep…
(Sorry for the thread hijack)
No probs, looks impressive
I have a RadioLink MiniPix that has never worked, and still trying to get them to replace it, but the GPS works fine with Mro Pixracer.