output devices

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This week's assignmentw was to create an output device. I decided to try to create a device that would light up different colors at different temperatures as well as output heat from a little ceramic heater that I plan on using in my final project for my armchair coffee mug warmer.

The first step for this week, however, was to create a new programmer, because somehow last week my programmer stopped working? it programmed my board one second, and then the next second, it wasn't working -- weird, but that's okay. I saw this as an opportunity to try something new and and understand somehing else.

I decided to create a MiniTiny programmer, that needs a mini-usb cable to plug into the computer to program other things. I used this (http://fab.cba.mit.edu/content/archive/projects/fabisp/) fab project as a guide to creating my own board.



I milled my board, soldered on the pieces, and now I have to program it to be able to program other things.



I used the Atmel-ICE in the architecture lab to do this, and it seems that it worked based on the outputs from the terminal:

but when I plug it into my computer, the FabISP does not show up.



I've been trying to troubleshoot some reasons why this is happening: 1) I'm on my windows partition of my computer right now, which may not have the right drivers installed to recognize the device 2) the programming actually did run correctly. I will be heading over to the elec office hours to get some help troubleshooting this so i can have a working programmer for the next couple of weeks.

unfortunately, i was out of town this weekend, so i was hoping that my newly programmed programmer would work so that i could program my output device for this week. this was a road block unfortunately. I was able to design, mill, and solder an output board that had a RGB LED and a 2x2 header that would be able to pick up VCC and Ground to attach my heating device.







i'm in the process of trying to program the board now, but i realize that i have done a lot of things incorrectly. i think there are some shorts and some components soldered on wrong.

since my board this week didn't work, i decided to play more withmy board from last week -- which also acted like an output device by having an LED. I had not yet programmed it such that once the thermistor registers a certain temperature, the light would go on. so I did that!

this next week will be a week where i'll focus on getting a more complex output board working.