Output Devices

I was not able to finish this week's assignment [yet]. Please ask me about my project!

First attempt

I wasn't sure what to make for this week, so I started with one of the charlieplexing examples that Neil showed in class. I wanted to be able to connect this board to my water sensor so that my final project bag could light up if water was sensed. I had a hard time figuring out the exact schematic diagram, but also found the wiring to be a huge mess. I redrew the schematic more times than I want to admit.

Once I felt somewhat confident that I would be able to make the schematic work, I was shocked to see what the wiring looked like.

Milling (With the Othermill!

A small achievement this week is that I learned how to use the othermill. I was surprised to learn how easy it is to use! I will write up a documentation about how to use the othermill next week.

Motors!

After struggling to wire up the Charlieplex, I went into lab and discovered that lights may not be the most useful output device for my project. Initially, I wanted to connect my input device water sensor from last week to a set of leds that would light up when water was sensed. But my original project idea was to sense water from inside a bag and then open the bag to let water out; a natural servo motor job!

Design

I relied largely on Neil's example servo board that he showed in class. It was difficult to understand a lot of the footprints and components, but a few that I found particularly confusing are listed below:

• IC2 5V - Voltage regulator
• Servo Motor - the footprints represented should be any pin object. I chose a 1x03 pin header.
• The power connection to the J2 component should be VDC.

Motor Board

Although I wasn't able to use the bitbreaker from the Bantam Tools, I was still able to mill my board. The traces looked a bit deep, but I will try to stuff it and see it if works. For this design, I only used one motor, and also added an led and a button for debugging purposes. I used three pins to connect the servo motor to the board.

I was only able to get the hello motor code, but that is as far as I was able to get. I am planning to use this piece for my final project.