06 | embedded programming
ALL OF THE LIGHTS BY ALBERT CHING
Hip hop and rap was my inspiration for this week's assignmnet of how to make which coincided nicely with Halloween weekend. Since I am pretty new to embedded programming, I decided to try my hand at just the basics of milling, stuffing and programming a basic board. With help from Adam Setapen, Brian Mayton, Alan Cramer & David Melis and inspiration and music from Kanye West and Rihanna, I programmed by ATTiny44 to become a mini-strobe light.

Designing the Board in Eagle and Illustrator

I followed the basic instructions for adding an LED and a button to the basic board that Adam went over in his amazingly helpful section on Eagle. The only change I made was attempting to make a creative board cut-out.

Milling the Board on the Modella and Stuffing in the Lab

Milling thankfully was a lot more straightforward this time but unfortunately the Eagle cutout did not work out on the first two tries so I abandoned the effort. After getting great advice from Alan on how to avoid easy stuffing mistakes, I was able to get the board soldered in 20 minutes (woohoo!). Brian helped me figure out that my board was working but the LED needed to be resoldered.

Programming the Board in C

I got really lucky this week and both my board and my FabISP were still working so I was able to start programming my board in C. I uploaded a simple program with the main code below to light up my LED.

Programming the Board in Arduino

I found that the Arduino workflow for programming the ATTiny44 was a little more streamlined for fine-tuning the LED blinking so I ended up using Arduino to complete the synchronization of the light to the music.

Waterjet-cut bling

With the help of Tom, I also tried the waterjet cutter for the first time and was able to live a longtime dream to become my namesake rapper for Halloween. The laser-cut bling was hotter than the Holiday Inn