Project Development

Slide and Video

The video and slide for the project can be found at Exercise 19

The final project page can be found at Final Project

Bill of materials

Design files

All design files and code can be downloaded here: scuttlebuttisland.zip

License

More about the license can be found at Exercise 19, the short version is it's GPLv3 and CC-NC-SA

What work has been done by others

As mentioned in Exercise 13 I'm using an existing SSB implementation, a Rasperry Pi Zero W and a commerical charger board.

What tasks have been completed, and what tasks remain?

At this point I have finished all of the design tasks, created the case and battery housing, tested if I can power the Raspberry Pi using the batteries I bought and set up WiFi, DHCP and DNS. The last two steps are milling and soldering the controller board, writing a program that keeps track of the time and setting up the Secure Scuttlebutt pub that will be used to communicate with the device.

What has worked? what hasn't?

The vacuum forming generally worked like a charm, but I had to manually remove a few folds.

Getting a good connection for the batteries took a while to figure out, all of that will be documented on the final project page.

Until now all other parts worked fine without any problems.

What questions need to be resolved?

How does the Secure Scuttlebutt API work and how can I set up ssb-server to act like a pub?

How long can I run the Pi from a fully charged battery pack and how good does it charge in the sun?

How can I write rollover safe code for managing the uptime off the device without using an external real-time clock?

What will happen when?

First I will produce and program the board, the software and networking part will be completed afterwards. I already did some research in that direction so it should not be a problem.

What have you learned?

I learned the process of vacuum forming, as well as deepening my knowledge in laser cutting, 3D modeling and printing, and electronics design. I needed a lot of time for setting up the Raspberry Pi offline and without a screen and keyboard, which tought me a lot about networking and the Linux operating system.

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