thallia
PCB 95% Complete : Binary Watch
A little under a month ago, my PCBs arrived! It has been a hilariously long wait to get everything else up to par.
My GitHub repo is a little more updated every now and then before I write posts, if you want to follow along as I finish up: thallia’s GitHub
The binary watch came in the cutest purple package:
And here’s the final product!!
Isn’t it gorgeous? I love the purple color.
I went immediately into soldering with the parts I had (which of course, took an extra week to arrive because of weather.)
I forgot how tedious SMD/T soldering is. Finally, I had all the parts soldered except for my lovely ATMega328P-AU.
It took me forever to get a programmer for that thing. First I tried soldering wires to it, which was a bad idea.
Next, I tried ordering a cheap board from this place called Schmartboard. They had really good pricing but…
The place for the TQFP was wayyyyy too small. Oh well. I got a free pair of headphones out of it, so who am I to complain?
I finally got a paycheck where I could order one of these babies:
And lemme tell ya. It was worth the $3.99 shipping. Not only was it super sleek and easy to solder the headers onto, but it worked ON THE FIRST TRY.
That doesn’t usually happen, so I was extremely ecstatic.
With some handy dandy wires I got the chip programmed, soldered onto the board, and I was finished.
But….the circuit doesn’t work on the PCB. So I now get to go through the delights of debugging a PCB, which sounds nightmare inducing and fun at the same time. We’ll see! XD But either way, this project is literally 99.9% done! I’m so excited.
In my next post, I’ll announce my newest project, the hardware and software I’m using, and what I’ve been learning to complete it in this post-absence of an Aprilish-May.
{thallia}