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February 2022

Contents

• meta
• electronics
• ecad and project management
• 3d
• electronic origami/kirigami
• documentation

meta >

• topics: efab, 3d, ecad
• still trying to get the hang of making more frequent, “low stakes” updates

electronics >

the electronics arc goes something like this:

• efab
• ecad
• embed

ecad and project management >

however, I won’t get my primary efab tools until Sunday (roland). I started off this batch of assignments by going straight to ecad, since I’m already “fluent” in Altium.

I’ve noticed a bad feedback loop where I procrastinate on documentation until right before the assignment is due; I know, it’s not great.

I figured out a couple of things while trying to diagnose my problem:

• I’m letting too many external expectations drive my goal setting
  • eg, I see a lot of cool ideas in the fab network, and I’m letting doing something “cool” override doing something I want to do
• I’m spiraling out way faster than I should be, skipping closer spirals to “save time”
  • spoiler: it doesn’t save time
• hello-worlds are for everyone, don’t skip them
• being original starts from being unoriginal
• documentation takes a very long time, even when I have all the content
  • like, multiple hours of work between screenshots, compression, formatting, etc.

ecad hello world >

I talked to Dan about what we have in stock at the fablab, and determined that he has the stuff for an attiny44a.

I spent some time designing a hello-world board for the attiny44a from scratch, adding an led and switch, plus passives. Supposedly, ordering from oshpark was extra credit, so I did that.

I had additional reasons to order a PCB instead of just milling one:

• I was curious about the practical speed difference between ordering from eg oshpark vs fabbing a PCB using the cnc/vinylcutter
• I also wanted a concrete reason to complete a full spiral for ecad design quickly, and the pressure to order and receive sometime next week helped expedite the process

this is especially critical to me because I have a love/hate relationship with finalizing electronics designs:

• there is a large enough time cost for pcb turnaround (w/o making shipping expensive) that I’d rather not have to respin a board
• if I discover a bug after I populate the board, that makes me sad… components are expensive :’(
• if life is busy/work is busy, alotting enough time to send out a design can seem insurmountable due to the bug squashing aspect

effectively, pcb fab houses don’t enable iteration for me, which is bad for getting things done.

this situation is an interesting combo:

• needing to order a PCB creates the pressure to deliver sooner
• mistakes are less costly because I don’t have to get the first iteration right, since I need to use the CNC mill to prototype 1-sided PCBs anyways

these two details make it so that I finish my first spiral asap.

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in practice, this combo has been working out very effectively so far. I still need to go through efab, so tbd.

3d >

I have some sla benchmarks already printed for my elegoo mars 2p, but I actually ran out of resin for that print, and one of the models didn’t complete… I haven’t used my resin setup in a bit, so getting it up and running may be non-trivial. In the meantime, to complete the assignment, I used my ender 3 to print a full set of benchmarks.

I was in the middle of my photoshoot before I had to leave, so pictures are not done yet.

electronic origami/kirigami >

I spent some time thinking about paper electronics and related, for cba research. Still testing waters to see how much I should work on for class vs for cba.

documentation >

for week3 assignment (cncSmall), I worked on compression scripts a bit, but they were piecemeal and required finagling to get working. Given that I’m attempting to document 3 assignments in the span of a weekend, I think I’ll want to get my feedback loops figured out better.

so, plan:

• outline posts (week3, 4, 5)

• fix compression/cropping scripts to be easier to use
• vim indent fix
• centralized todo

---

I’ve been struggling a bit with juggling everything on my plate right now, but after some thought I found the following quote:

“A life without failure is not a life well lived”.

I may fail at some of my current tasks, but I will still succeed. I think I’m on the right trajectory, even if it sometimes doesn’t feel like it.