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As I mentioned in the previous post when I got into doing electronics and
hardware gubbins I decided that some nice milestones would be a good way to
mark my progress. Get my RPi up and running. Connect some circuits to it, via
a breadboard. Design a cool application and make it a reality. Something you
can use to say that you've skilled up and understand the processes involved.
I consider the posts over the past few years to be proof somewhat of the level of competence I've achieved, and I'm starting to learn more about the theory of electronics too (but not very well) while I go. One thing that has hampered my progress with the kind of projects described in the last blog entry is making enclosures. We'll get on to that at a later date I expect. For now though I'd like to concentrate on another thing that I did that represents a personal level up.
I got some PCBs made! I designed some standalone Arduino boards to hold a chip
and crystal and all associated things needed to program them and get them
running on their own, although there's no regulator on them - just power
terminals. They work pretty well, I've used them to program chips straight
from the Arduino UNO board (after taking the chip out of that first). I've
also run them on their own controlling things off a battery. I DID have the
idea of sending them to friends as gifts to make up themselves, but without
it's own USB programmer on board it's a bit useless - you'd have to buy one.
After that I had a delay of months where I played with various other things. As usual with someone like me I get hot and cold on things and basically moved back to ham radio. However, a couple of bad builds put paid to that. I'll be looking into that again later on but I wouldn't expect any blogs about it. Digital electronics is much easier.
Oh, I DID build an FM Radio kit though after my wife bought me it for
Christmas and tried to move it from the breadboard it came with to a
perfboard. Worked well! But then I needed to make an enclosure and I realised
I have no tools or resources for this. So into the drawer it goes for later
use. If you're looking to move from working on breadboards and beginner kits to something more useful then I can recommend turning your favourite kit for kids into a permanent project like this. Taught me about component layout, improved my soldering skills a bit more, that kinda thing.
Finally, I did make a PCB that actually is an original(ish) idea. A conference
badge for people who are a little shy or don't like to be bothered or who want
to beckon everyone over to chat. Or for speed dating, as somebody suggested the other day. I'm quite proud of this for numerous reasons,
and I'm going to talk about that in the next blog. Essentially I decided to switch to a different microcontroller - the ATTiny85 - because it really didn't need as much as power as a full Arduino, let's be honest. Cheaper as well. I'm absolutely over the moon with how this turned out and then had about 3 different ideas for improvements, so I'll probably make a version 2 of this at some point.
One other, rather more major PCB I designed and shown above is this rather insane ham radio
board called The Megapixie. It's a Morse code transmitter, made for low power - or "QRP" -
operation. It's adapted from a commercial board (The Pixie) with all of the best
modifications I found from around the Internet. I hope to get this made soon
and give it a go but I should breadboard parts of it first really.
I'm using KiCAD, an excellent open source tool, to design the schematics and
boards for my projects and I'm getting quite into it. One thing I've noticed
is that you're never satisfied. You'll spend days just moving parts ever so
slightly to the left so you can squeeze something else in and then move an
entire row down. It's a bit fiddly. Proper planning helps. There's also an
excellent 3D preview for your boards, which makes you feel all fuzzy inside as
you start dreaming about what it will be like in your hands.
So yeah, things are progressing and I'm enjoying myself. I hope to get back into blogging semi-regularly about what I'm up to in the vague hope that someone comes across it and it inspires or helps them one day.
I consider the posts over the past few years to be proof somewhat of the level of competence I've achieved, and I'm starting to learn more about the theory of electronics too (but not very well) while I go. One thing that has hampered my progress with the kind of projects described in the last blog entry is making enclosures. We'll get on to that at a later date I expect. For now though I'd like to concentrate on another thing that I did that represents a personal level up.
After that I had a delay of months where I played with various other things. As usual with someone like me I get hot and cold on things and basically moved back to ham radio. However, a couple of bad builds put paid to that. I'll be looking into that again later on but I wouldn't expect any blogs about it. Digital electronics is much easier.
So yeah, things are progressing and I'm enjoying myself. I hope to get back into blogging semi-regularly about what I'm up to in the vague hope that someone comes across it and it inspires or helps them one day.
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