14. Networking and communications

Networking week was super difficult, but I managed to pull through! I had to make a lot of boards this week, but I’ll sum it up like this:

Board Production

Board production was pretty difficult. I had to make a bunch of different boards since my traces would either break or not cut through. It was pretty difficult, but I ended up getting through it. For the process of making a board, check out my week 5, week 7, week 9, or week 11!

Networking Schematic Networking Board

Programming in Arduino

Programming my baords was a whole other story. I found out in the arduino code that I had to change the number from ‘0’ to ‘1’ after I programmed my bridge board. 1 would be my node. That solved a lot of problems with the Arduino programming. Other than that, I didn’t have much issue with Arduino.

Programming in Python

Whether it be step response or charlie plexing, Python is always finicky with indentation, with libraries, with pip, with almost anything! Its no wonder why Python has decided to scrap 2.7 and switch to 3.1, but it makes it super hard to convert all the old work done on 2 to 3. After I programmed both boards with the FTDI header, I tested to see if they worked. They didn’t at first, but when plugged in, I did see the node program work! They were lit up and whenever I touched the RX pin, the lights would flash.

Now, after I flipped my FTDI cable, I was successfuly able to program them!