Week 6 Reflection

Reflection:

This week was pretty challenging since I am new to electronics. If I am called on in class, I know I did not finish but I promise I will not fall behind. Anyway, to get into it.

I started by watching a bunch of YouTube videos on how to read schematics and how to power a motor with a Xiao ESP32C3.

I was going to do the board I did for the project last week, however, when I designed it, the lines/traces were too small and we also did not have the parts. So instead of re-doing that, I decided to try something for my project.

I basically wanted to prototype the process of getting a motor to work since I would need a motor to deliver nicotine onto a patch. While I would need a much smaller motor to make the patch easily wearable, I figured it would still be good to start working with motors.

I did a bunch of research into how I could get a Xiao to power a 12V motor and realized that I needed a MOSFET, which is an item that allows a small amount of voltage to establish the connection between the 12V DC motor and its power source. I drew out how my schematics should look to try to understand what I was doing better.

I tried to use a MOSFET I found and measure it out, but eventually realized that it was not in the KiCad component. I found another MOSFET that worked for the breadboard test. I tested the 12V motor with the power source in the lab and it worked, so I got started. I tried doing this with a battery on the breadboard, but the battery connections were pretty faulty, and I could not get them to work. This took me an absurd amount of time to figure out.

So I started drawing out the schematic, which was not terribly difficult after finding out which parts we had in the lab that were also in KiCad. I also found a smaller MOSFET in the KiCad library which I can solder on. After making this design, I drew out the traces on the PCB editor then got the thing uploaded to MODs.

Leo helped show me how the mill worked and how to get it set up. I eventually milled out my PCB board after missing one up and then attempted to solder. I could solder on the microcontroller and the headers I was going to use to connect the pump and power source to, but I could not figure out how to connect the minute pieces on. I will figure this out at office hours soon, but right now I have this.

PCB I can work with: