Teensy 3.1 programmer for ATtiny85 chips - going permanent, part 3

This is a continuation of my previous post Teensy 3.1 programmer for ATtiny85 chips - going permanent, part 2 and the last part of the tutorial. After a couple of months of a break, this time, I'm going to connect indicator LEDs and the socket. The board does not look as clean and neat as initially thought it would, but it's my first one afterall.

I took my time finishing the board as after wiring everything up and soldering it together, I introduced a hardware bug and couldn't figure out where it was. After a couple of days of scratching my head I put my unfinished board on the shelf and decided I would get back to it at some stage. I looked at it almost every day for a couple of months saying to myself: "I will fix you some day" and finally, last weekend I decided that this just has to end. I took my trusty yellow multimeter and started debugging.

Finding hardware problems is not as easy as debugging a high level program. There's no IDE, no debugger, no stack trace. There is just your board and your multimeter. And a short circuit somewhere. Debugging a physical circuit is not as easy as "stepping into" your code or whatever term you use (if you've ever debugger a program, that is!). It is a tedious set of checks, one wire after another. One after another, and again and again... Even if you find a bug (minimal or infinitely large resistance), it is not immediately obvious what causes it. It wasn't any different in my case.

I found two short circuits and I had no idea what could have caused them. I almost gave up a couple of times, but after hours and hours of probing, I finally found my mistake. And when I finally did, I was far from happy with what caused it! As it turns out, when you drill a hole in the copper strip to break the connection, you have to be very careful not to leave any residue copper touching the neighbouring strips. Zero, null. If you do (and you might not even see it!), you, my friend, are up for a treat - hours of tedious tests and misery.

Thankfully all ended well and I finally fixed the board. Let me show you the process step by step.

1. Indicator LEDs connected and working (I decided to stir thing up a bit and assign the red LED to WRITE signal):
   
   
2. Socket connected:
   
   
3. RESET and GND lines connected:
   
   
4. Remaining lines connected:
   
   
5. And finally, the board gets cut:
   
   

This is the final part of the tutorial.

A piece of advice for keen fans of electronics: think twice before you buy a stripboard like mine. If you're a beginner, just like me, it will most definitely cost you hours of head-scratching if you make a tiniest mistake. And after it's finished, it will not look pretty.

However, finding a bug and fixing it does give some sort of feeling of accomplishment, so it wasn't all that bad :)

Thanks for reading and happy hardware hacking!