Electronics Design

I knew after finishing the Outputs Assignment I wanted to play more with RGB ligts, ideally creating several programs and patterns which responded to differeing inputs. I thought I would start basic by using levers to pull pins and activate different while loops, with different permutations of flipped levers could all yield unique outputs. I also wanted in integrate a pyrometer, and ideally one of the sonar units, so that eye responses and movements could be triggered by proximity.

I repeated the motif from my outputs assignment, and wanted to cross-wire the RGBs so there would be many different colors on the board. Additionally, the apparent "movement" of the LEDs downward would be futher enhanced by having a longer series of LEDs. I decided to try to wrap them around the eyes, do see if I could acheive any semblance glowing eye, like a prober gundam or robot costume would.

I decided to design two boards. The larger board would hold the LEDs encircline the eyes. I decided to make this a major hardware board, holding all of the resistors and cross wiring - this seemed most expedient, since there would a total of 6 separate cathod tracks. The inner three rows connect all of the same color LEDS on the same track, so the lights will change in unison. The outer 3 tracks will be connected to a different switch, and will be used for the cross-wiring of the LEDs to achive a "running lights" effect around the eyes, as well as other multi-colored pattens. The second boardx would be a control panel, housing the microcrontroller, swtiches, and power regulation.

The first PNG for the traces I generated was very messy, full of artifacts which seemed to confuse fab modules, and also drastically increase the wait wait for the Roland Mill. So I redesigned the board from scratch again, being sure eliminate artifacts early, and use Gimp to draw solid, smooth traces on the PNG.

While the first board was milling (took over an hour. Sorry classmates!) I quickly designed a 3D printed model for a set of pins to mount on the human wireframe. In this case, they will hold the LED panel, but they are versatile and can be used on every 4-way junction on the model. It was my first time using the Makerbot, and it seemed to be just fine to me, althoug I was surprised by the apparent lack of control options in Makerbot's software.

Finally, I milled the control board. Some of the traces were close, so I set the tool diameter to 0.2 (usually 0.4 for 1/64 endmill), and increased the overlap. The board came out almost perfect, except one route was hacked off on the edge. I mended this with a jumper, and then stuffed the board. I stopped using the rainbow-wire as a source of wire (it's too big, the fibers flare apart and make it hard to place, and the rubber coating melts very fast.) I switched to a smaller guage wire, but a single solid strand, with a more resistant plastic coating that was easier to bend into place.

I thought the board looked good, and testing AVR dude revealed no "rc=-1" error. So I packaged up one of the codes I wrote for the 3-LED RBG for Output devices, to test the equipment. Although swtiches were attached, their pins were not set for any input, and the board should have behaved just like my previous board. But it didn't work - despite successfully loading onto the microcontroller, none of the lights turned on.

	Control Panel. Wmop womp.