Week Thirteen: Networking & Communications

This week, we were supposed to get two microcontrollers talking to each other. I decided to hijack this for my final project, because I wanted to use two microcontrollers (one controlling stepper motors, one controlling the hot wire cutter), and wanted the ability to turn the hot wire cutter on and off. So I came up with this plan of talking to my hot wire cutter and firing off an interrupt to stop PWMing. Then I realized this was dumb, and decided I could just pull my reset line low when I needed it off, so I implemented that. I also added an LED so I could see when it was on or off.

I worked on a bunch of other things this week as well. Tired of the fact that rapid prototyping was slow and breadboarding was much faster, I made a breakout board for the attiny45 (with programming header, a bypass cap, and a pull-up resistor on reset) so I could test circuits out on a breadboard.

I also found these awesome caps in the trash and made a full-bridge rectifier. Eventual goal will be to power my circuits off wall power through this.

I also talked with Ilan Moyer about machines he's built and he answered lots of questions for me. Then came the realization that my previous design would take a lot of work and time that I didn't have, so I did a redesign. This has a smaller working space, but uses less parts and I think will be easier to troubleshoot. I ordered all the parts this morning, and hopefully will get here soon. In the meantime, I can lasercut all my pieces out...