@AriMastor05 months into this project and it's finally finished! This is a gadget geocache for my local maker space. Custom PCB (funded by Onboard) interfaced with an Arduino for controlling LEDs in the eyes, giving instructions on how to solve the puzzle through the speaker, checking the password entered, and controlling a solenoid to open the hatch on the bottom when the puzzle is solved. Hand crank on the side turns a geared stepper motor to charge supercapacitors that provide enough power to last a few minutes so nobody has to worry about charging or replacing batteries. The whole thing is covered in epoxy for weatherproofing. Hopefully, it will be up and running in a week or so!
@RyanDiLorenzo-U04JGJN2B400I got the CH32V003F4U6 RISC-V microcontroller today and I wanted to program it with the USB protocol to make flashing a whole lot easier. To flash this microcontroller you need another microcontroller called the WCH-LinkE Mini. I plugged the WCH-LinkE flasher into my computer before installing custom drivers for it and got some cables to connect the flasher to the actual microcontroller. After this I tried to get the compiled binary file to flash after seeing they only have the C code, the instructions looked simple enough, just a simple "make build" command in the directory? I must have spent an hour and a half troubleshooting on why I was getting strange compilation errors and "SYNTAX ERROR IN LINE 502 OF FILE", it turns out that you have to copy another Github Repo's source code into a folder on the USB repo which contacts the C protocol file. Finally it compiled into a binary then I saw it wanted me to use the offical Wch-Link Programmer tool which I couldn't find a working website anywhere - the official website was down and there were no copies. I finally found and decided on using one built in Rust and after learning how to use the flash command, I kept getting the same generic "No microcontroller found". Another one and a half hours pass and on the readme file on the main repo, in small words it says to use the PD1 pin. Everywhere else I'd looked they said to connect to the SWIO pins or the UART pins and nowhere else said to use this specific PD1 pin only. At last, I finally got it to flash successfully, but upon connecting the USB-C cable right to the microcontroller, it wasn't showing up on Windows with the default pinouts. In the instructions though, it said to change the USB-C pin depending on what the microcontroller is connected to, seems simple right? Wrong, I purchased the microcontroller dev board off AliExpress and there was no mention anywhere of the pins or a pinout of where the USB-C data positive and negative lines are connected to. Not even any other github repos or anywhere had something that looked exactly as the PCB dev board I got. My next task is to reverse engineer the traces to figure out what exact GPIO pin the USB-C data lines are connected to, but this will prove to be tricky... Or maybe I can message the AliExpress seller but who knows when they'd reply.
TLDR: It still doesn't work after all the issues I've had, the problem I'm facing now is the proprietary PCB I got from AliExpress which they won't post the schematic to.
@EvanGan7+Day 57 of #100-days-in-public.
Today I labeled connections to make the circuit diagram legible and show the proper names in the board layout. Tomorrow I plan on looking into creating a second board to go on top of this one that will include a communication chip and HDMI port.
@EvanGan7+Day 55 of #100-days-in-public.
Today I had some free time and was able to get the video I took yesterday of the eclipse on a drone to slack. A bit of context if you watch the video, I was in a parking lot of sorts with lots of people around. There are some nice folk next to us with little kids which you may hear in the background. All the audio is coming from where the controller is and the camera was ~300 feet above it up in the air. (see thread for video, as scrappy does not like how large it is)
I also worked on cleaning up my PCB design with some helpful observations from @AtanasAtanasov. As I went to export the design to try to get a price estimation I found lots of design rule violations that I made. Tomorrow I am going to take a closer look to see what I need to resolve.
@EvanGan7+Day 53 of #100-days-in-public.
I finally finished my board! Theoretically I could submit for onboard grant now, but I think I am going to take a few days to see if I can make the board smaller/neater.
@cupcakes7+Led a Leader Lab today about PCBs! hopefully the first in a series of topic-specific leader discussions!!
@EvanGan7+Day 49 of #100-days-in-public.
Getting pretty cramped in my PCB design. Going to be at the New England district championship for first robotics tomorrow-Saturday, and am going to try to post some robotics related scrapbooks!
@EvanGan7+Day 48 of #100-days-in-public.
Today I signed up for #apocalypse and continued to route my PCB. I think I may be able to finish it within the week...
@EvanGan7+Day 46 of #100-days-in-public.
Today I got back on track and continued to route my PCB! I made a LOT of progress. After manual routing for quite a few hours I am beginning to understand what @karmanyaahm meant when they said "routing is art." The board currently sits at 26 x 45 millimeters but I have a few ideas on how to make it smaller...
@cupcakes7+Almost done with the microphone pcb design! 🎤
@sahitid0:kitty-dance: 🌸 *days of service ship incoming:*:kitty-dance: 🌸
Blossom 🌸 was held in Atlanta, Georgia from March 15-16th.
working closely with the Girl Scouts of Greater Atlanta :girl-scouts:, i had the privilege of organizing a day-long event that brought together a team of high school female mentors and dozens of eager girl scouts. beginner girl scouts embarked on exciting journeys - from crafting their own PCB :pcb: keychains that they later had manufactured through #onboard to delving into an introduction of javascript :js: to code drawings on #blot the drawing robot. every girl went home with a unique new hardware or software project that they 100% created themselves, but most importantly, the confidence needed to pursue coding further :blobheart:.
we also had a brilliant dinner (with ricotta balls :blobby-doughnut:) the night before with 28+ women in technology and STEM who guided us with their stories and experiences in their fields. all the high school mentors and i were fueled for the day ahead of us by the end of the night:half-salute:.
it was so motivating to see girls who had never touched code before leaving the event with the confidence that they had a place in the world of technology & finished projects that they could show off.
🔗 website: blossom.hackclub.com:githubparrot: github repo: github.com/hackclub/blossom
📷 day of service photos: drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-XnTK7QPwufdo4flwsF7syqOoZwB0z6C?usp=sharing
🥂 women in STEM dinner photos: drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-WR0RY4SCYAOzAD3T-Z6aT0_DYBsNGgj?usp=sharingthank you to @MariannaLudensky@NilaRam@christina695 & the whole <!subteam^S06A2EGQ29M|@blossom-team> for the wonderful event we pulled off, hopefully inspiring many girls along with each other through the process.
@karmanyaahm0Learning NextJS API Routes for #onboard gerber.zip
@KarthickArun0Keyboard and usb c to micro adapter has finally arrived with 1 day delivery from Amazon edit : for my raspberry pi build to actually use one of my raspberry pi’s since got a lot of old ones laying around and also gonna post the final build
@RyanDiLorenzo-U04JGJN2B400My cat's automatic litter box recently stopped working and it's around 300$ for a replacement which we were thinking of doing. I thought I could take a look at it and see if I could try to fix it. I initially thought the motherboard traces were corroded and not making contact so I tried to reflow the solder but no luck. The motherboard and microcontroller pre-installed had no documentation or help guides other than contacting the company to buy a replacement.
I decided to try if I can use a Wemos D1 Mini ESP8266 microcontroller to control it, and after many hours (6) later I present to you a polarity switching circuit using 3 SPDT relays, a step-down buck converter to convert the 18V power from the built-in power on the cat litter to 12V the relays could use. Then after a lot of trial and error I found the perfect transistor (2N2222) in my transistor kit to convert the 3.3v logic levels from the ESP8266 to the 12v or something that the relays can use. Some of my trouble could be avoided if I used the correct DPDT relay modules meant for this, but this is all I had on hand.
It's not quite finished since I still need to hook up the 2 sensors and 2 end stops to make it safe of course, but it's coming along and now the hard part is down. In the end, I'm going to open source a schematic design and order a PCB to contain everything.
@EvanGan7+Day 41 of #100-days-in-public.
Today I played around with routing on my PCB a bit more in the free time I had.
At robotics today I took apart a leaf blower to salvage the blade to use for our robot to open a flap in the game field. I was quite surprised how small the blade was for how strong the blower is.
@cupcakes7+Started the process for the Onboard grant! And made the PR!
@EvanGan7+Day 40 of #100-days-in-public.
Today I got back to my PCB! I started trying to layout the actual board but remembered I never learned how to use that part of Easy EDA. Instead I used the auto router with some success.
My goal for the coming days is to figure out how to setup the auto router with nets connecting to their respective planes, put some components on the bottom of the board, and make it smaller.
@JosiasAurel0Late update: We got halfway there balancing our drone yesterday. We didn’t get to record because the cables connected to our battery burnt due to a short circuit 🥲 so we’ll have to solder new ones.
@cupcakes7+Led the Pi-day PCB Part 2 workshop today!
@EvanGan7+Day 35 of #100-days-in-public.
Today I added flash memory to my RP2040 implementation. It still needs a bit of work, and I have some questions I need to ask to the folk of #onboard.
@brunoblaise 0After a very long time of waiting finally my pcbs card just arrived :)
@CassidyCodes0Dang it I lost my streak i think i forgot to post yesterday| Anyways My #onboard pcb is arriving tomorrow, Im Excited and can't wait to showcase it at school to my hackclub
@Leo0It can now count by 2's and multiply!!!!!! Lmao this is getting fun now
@AlwaysBusy0Just making my first PCB through Hack Club thanks for that 🙏
@CassidyCodes0JLPCB PCB UPDATE: | Keep Posted Guys In A While I Will Post Images of my club making their pcb's for #onboard |
@msw0🤡 I’m a clown and didn’t check the audio track of my video yesterday, so today I learned about stereo and mono tracks. Reuploaded the video here: youtu.be/Bh3dm81X_zs!
@msw0since my last video about making PCBs, I’ve had a bunch of feedback about people who had trouble submitting PRs.
now there’s new video about submitting a PR in (almost) under a minute! www.youtube.com/watch?v=qL4d6AFx-9E, and it was made in under a day in #onboard-bts— check out the channel for the whole WIP thread
@CassidyCodes0Applied For Clubs got accepted And Got The Onboard Grant.
@jakjakob0Sketchy, but it works! After months of waiting for the parts (realising that I missed the power supply I thought I had - so even more waiting), dismounting a stuff, only realising after that I could access the port just from above, my all in one to external monitor is (almost) finished! Just need to cover it up, figure out how to make the touch work (maybe it works with windows, idk - or with the driver I found somewhere?) and then I can start using it! (P. S.: if I needed it I could still add the integrated speakers and the CD drive)
