Homework
- Our homework was to add an output device to a microcontroller board I've designed and program it to do something. We were also allowed to fabricate one of the "hello world" example boards.
- I chose the hellolcd board and I hope to use it in my final project somehow to display race times for my racetrack finish line. I learned a new soldering trick this week....tinning the wire.
- EAGLE!!!! Need I say more? Just when you think you're grasping something, you have a setback, right? I was pretty down about it last Friday night and feeling very unsuccessful. I worked for over 2 hours independently only to find out that I had many errors on my schematic. Then, it's tough to keep a positive attitude.
- Being an electronics beginner in FAB Academy is not easy.
- After my rough night with Eagle, I ended up having to thicken the traces and cut another board because we all decided they were too thin.
- Major setback: I soldered
my entire LCD board, including wires soldered directly to pads which was tough. I was getting a crazy amount of power, and I realized I needed to switch the ground and power........rookie mistake? I fixed that, and with further
testing, my teacher and I decided my traces were too thin, which was upsetting because I DID thicken the traces once before.
Programming The Board
- I just want my new LCD to work and actually display words. We'll see.......I've decided to thicken the traces and use the same design I had before and hope for the best. I should be able to use the wire parts of my original board and LCD. I really want to make it work so I can use it on my final project!
- Okay, it's many weeks later and I'm sad to say that my LCD board is toast. I have decided to fabricate the "hellorgb" board. This board's function is to control the intensity of red, green, and blue colors that are emitted from the LED. It's late in the semester and this was my BEST work!!!!! The board looked great after soldering EVEN THOUGH it is very
small in surface area.
The programming was EASY. Basically, after I had renamed the makefile to just "makefile", I saved the c file and the makefile where I could find it easily, and gave the following commands to the terminal:
Challenges
myersg@SOI-MYERSG:~/hellorgb$ make
myersg@SOI-MYERSG:~/hellorgb$ sudo make program-avrisp2
avrdude: verifying ... avrdude: 338 bytes of flash verified avrdude: safemode: Fuses OK (H:FF, E:DF, L:62) avrdude done. Thank you.
I LEARNED....
hellorgb terminal log
Neil's C code for hellorgb
Neil's make file for hellorgb
Design Files
hellolcd schematic
hellolcd board
hellolcd interior
hellolcd traces