System Assembly

This guide will take you through the assembly of the entire miniscope system.

Head Mounted Scope Assembly

A brief outline of steps to assemble the scope can get found here: File:AssemblingScope.pdf.

Data Acquisition System Assembly

We generally have all surface mount (SMD) components assembled on the DAQ PCB by a third party PCB assembly house leaving only the through-hole components to be assembled in lab. It is possible to have the assembly house place both SMD and through-hole components but it is more expensive and through-hole components are relatively easy to solder. A good through-hole soldering tutorial can be found here.

Through-hole component assembly

If you decide to have the through-hole components assembled by an assembly house you can skip this section. Below is a picture highlighting the necessary through-hole components that need to be soldered in order for the DAQ PCB to function properly.

• Description of components
  • SW4: Reset button the resets can reset the USB Host Controller
  • U5: EEPROM (memory that holds the DAQ firmware) socket. You can also solder the EEPROM IC directly to the board but I prefer using an IC socket so I can swap out the EEPROM if necessary
  • K1,2,3: Each are 2pin 0.1" headers
  • J9: A 3pin header used with a 2pin jumper to select power source for the microscope
  • J3,4,5: SMA connectors used for GPIO pins
  • J6: We currently solder a short coax cable with SMA connector to these pads. This will be updated soon to a replace this with a proper PCB footprint