I was really looking forward to this week, because it was a chance to get started on something very specific about my final project: sensors. I started early the research about electret microphones and possible circuits that would amplify the signal from the elctret microphone. I ended up choosing to do the circuit found at the datasheet of the opamp available at the fablab, the AD8605.

I drew the circuit in Eagle, with the necessary tweaking to use the components found at the fablab, such as using resistors in series and capacitors in parallel connections.

After filling up all the components, I decided to test the sensor in an already available Arduino board. My goal is to make a Barduino board designed by Luciano Betoldi, but I first wanted to test the sensor board before setting out to make the Barduino board.

Unfortunately after much testing, debugging and resoldering, the board never worked. I kept getting a 0 Volt signal from the Serial Monitor of the Arduino IDE. Maybe because the circuit I copied was designed to work under other conditions? I will have to design a better circuit that will be able to amplify the signal from the electret microphone.

In the meantime, I still intend to use a microphone in my final project, so I milled the example board available from the academy website. I intend to solder it and test it soon to start working and figuring out what to do in my final project.