9. Embedded programming

This right here is when I started learning how to program my board.

Programming the board was pretty tough at first. I needed to remake my board since the ground plane I had before just wasn’t working out for me and I had a couple issues with putting my LED on. I ended up ripping part of the copper up, but that just taught me a bunch of new things. 1.) Copper can burn up quickly and you do not want that happening if you’re trying to tack something down. 2.) You can always use the same mistake you made before to help you solve a problem. 3.) Always, and I mean always, use flux and braid when trying to fix your mistakes. Let’s talk about 2. Now, I ended up burning the copper pad that I was trying to blob back onto the board. So instead of just giving up on the board, I used one of my previous boards for spare parts. I pulled up a resistors and the copper pads it was attached to and transferred it to the spot I needed it to be. I blobbed on a bunch of solder to the line connected to it and then soldered the component back on. Problem solved.

I’m actually super proud of what I did here! After I ripped up the copper pad I was so full of rage, but I was able to be productive with my rage and get something done for once.

Here’s the final board! It does look pretty ugly, but that’s just how it goes sometimes.

Now, I tested if my LED worked. I had already loaded the blink program on through Arduino before, so as soon as I plugged it into power the LED lit up! I was so suprised and shocked that I called over my dad immediatly. I was so proud of actually getting my circuit board to finally work! After I had finished that, I went on to make 3 more. I ended up loading the ‘button’ program from Arduino on them. They all responded to the button, but one of them loaded the program weirdly. See, when I pressed the button it lit up, but then it started to perform the ‘blink’ program from earlier. I thought it was strange and might have to do with the button not working, but I realized that it was probably the ATTiny since it wasn’t reading the data right.

Here’s the link to my button video:

blink from Brigette N O'Neill on Vimeo.

Here’s the link to my bugged out button program video:

button glitch? from Brigette N O'Neill on Vimeo.