Week 9

Output

Servos

This week the assignment was to design and make a board to run an output device. I decided to try to make a servo motor, which should be able to help me for my final project for which I will need to drive two different motors seperately with specific sequenced controls. I wasn't sure which motor to use, but it seems servos have good fine control which would be more useful for what I want to do. I tried this week to make a basic version of what I would like to make for my final project, I ended up running into some issues which I will need to solve for my final project – specifically, need to figure out the question of powering larger motors safely which I found confusing to figure out this week from online.

Drawing and Milling the Board

I drew the board from Niel's design on the website to start with. I moved around several components and had to rearrange certain parts in order for the pieces that were available in the lab to function correctly, for which I consulted the data sheets and pin arrangements.

Programming

In attempting to program the board this week I set up the files and programmer, but was not sure how to get power to the board. It seems in the past from the tutorials that I found that people were using nine volt batteries, but these were unavailable in the lab intentionally. I plan to finish this board soon once I can figure out how to give it power. I think I also lifted some of the copper on my programmer because the light wasn't turning on, so I am going to try and get that fixed soon but for the moment will use the avrisp programmer.