Week of 5/19 - 5/23

This week was a lot of progress and setbacks with the Hunter's Journal project. At the start of the week, I milled out the PCB I worked on last week and spent the day soldering it. I also switched all the PCB buttons with panel-mount buttons so they could attach to the side of the Hunter's device. I decided to do one final test of everything before putting things together, and I found out that the buttons don't work properly. I had to hold the reset button for the OLEDs to even work, and the button used to change the LEDS and what's on the OLEDs doesn't work; they just change without me pressing the button. Switching the reset button to a switch fixed the problem there easily, but the other button took a bit of work. I looked over the routing in Fusion and found out what caused the problem. I had the wire connecting the button to the pin on ATmega, the same wire that needed to be connected to Ground, which clearly it didn't do. So, I basically had the button connected to two powers and no grounds. It was a quick fix, but it meant that I had to remill the PCB all over again.

The Old PCB soldered

The New PCB w/ the button problem fixed

The Engle Mill was also giving me trouble. One of the two computers we use for the Mill wasn't working, well, the monitor wasn't working. Mr.L tried to help me fix it, but it was to no use(the monitor wasn't displaying the PC even with it plugged into the right spot). A fellow classmate, Will, was kind enough to let me use the mill he was going to use first. I also had to replace all the jumper wires with normal wires, as we use the jumper cables a lot in the shop, and I don't want to keep a bunch just locked within my project. I didn't replace them yet, I just got all the correct amount of wires needed for everything. All the wires are color-coded: red for power, black for ground, blue for LED data and CKL/SCL, yellow for Data/SDA and button data, and green for OLED reset. I had to unsolder some parts of the old PCB, which I got the parts, but at the cost of the PCB snapping in half. Opps

The wires all organized and cut.

The PC & Monitor after Mr.Christy worked his magic

The old PCB snapped in half

I did work on a sorta side project when I had time, which was a custom case for my phone. My current case is on it's last legs, bearly holding together as it is. So, I started to model a custom one before I didn't really know what I want to do after the Hunter's Journal. Finding the dimensions of my phone wasn't hard, as they are surprisingly very public knowledge. I really only have the phone model and the basic outline of the case, as I was mostly focused on the Hunter's Journal throughout the week. I'm hoping to finish the Hunter's Journal before the school year ends, which I think is possible. Who knows with my luck, though.

The outline of the phone case is modeled.