now that i had a working internal prototype developed in networking and interfacing weeks, i had to do a small redesign of my mold for the base and the lamp to make sure that that the xiao would fit. previously, only the cord was remaining but now i had to make sure that the led and button would fit perfectly inside the mold, and that the xiao could still be plugged in. i started a redesign in fusion360 and ended up making 3-4 iterations in kicad as well.

the most important kicad redesign i made it to change the way that the upper level and lower level were connected. in the previous iteration, i had made throughholes and wired from the bottom layer to the top layer.

this put a lot of strain on the joints and was pushing the copper up and away and breaking the traces and deforming the stack. it was also really hard to solder and fabricate so i knew i had to redesign it.

the new design had just 4 vertical male connectors that i had to carefully align with the plate above to make sure they ended up in the right place, because although the wires were bulky and didn't work well, they did allow for some tolerance around placement. this took 2-3 tries to get it right.

i made the holes through the PLA by marking the connectors with a sharpie and then using my soldering iron to bore a hole through at those points.

the redesign on the mold was that i improved registers, and made a larger gap for the xiao usb-a connector. this time, instead of milling the mold on the roland cnc, i used the sla printers (the formlabs) to print them.

the sla printers leave small bumps from the support structures so i removed these with a soft tip on the dremel, and some patience. then i poured oomoo into the molds and cast the lamp top by slowly rotating every 3 minutes until the center was drained and outsides of the mold were coated.

the mold comes out with some imperfections on the joint, and on the connection to the base. i used a sanding head on the dremel to clear any imperfections.

then i installed the electronics inside of the lamp base with a the PLA button and components.

i flashed the xiao with the code i had developed in the networking and interfacing weeks, and then tested it out.

then i tested the button functionality...

and finally, color picking!

here's the code and my fusion design files!