TamaGITchi

7/16/26 Today was very relaxing, as I began to finalize my CAD for the case. This involved adding spaces for the screen, keys, and adding text and logos to make my design stand out. This involved transferring logos into DXF, loading them into Onshape, and then adding them to sketches on the part’s surfaces. I still need to make a hole for the USB C coming out of the XIAO Board, but I will most likely do that tommorow. Today I made extrusions and sketches, as well as adding DXF and text elements. :) Tommorow, if the CAD is finalized, I wil export it and publish it to my repository as the guide detailed.

DEVLOG #05 7/15/26 So today I started the day with a little crashout, I read the docs to make sure I finished the PCB correctly…. Obviously I didn’t!So I added a copper layer GND plate, because I was not following a Hack Club specific tutorial and I was jsut getting everything confused. Lesson learned, I will stay in the Hack Pad Docs exclusively! After a quick 4 minute screen capture of my work, everything was done, and I deleted and recreated my .gbr and drill hole files for correct manufacturing!Next I began designing my case in Onshape, a CAD software I am familiar with, by following the Hack Club tutorial`

DEVLOG #04 :) 7/13/2026As I am writing this, it is 7/14/2026, but I did not have a chance to journal yesterday, nor work at all today. The break was nice, but tommorow I’ll be back on Onshape :). On this workday, everything went generally easy. While I only took a short screen capture of me struggling yesterday, I tracked the rest of my time with the Wakatime for KiCad extension as seen in the Hackatime project titled STARDANCE-PROJECT. I finished the ratsnest the day prior, so all I had to do was add the copper layer to finalize the PCB. I think I did this correctly as only 2 layers existed as detailed in the Slack. After this I ran diagnostics to check for errors and warnings. First, I recieved 12 errors about tolerances, so I lowered the tolerances (hopefully this is a valid method I’m new to this), and 1 error, because I screwed up the copper layer initially. After errors were resolved I downloaded all files needed including the .gbr and the drill pattern files for manufacturing.Glad everything today worked well, tommorow I will hafta learn how to track Onshape time, through both screen capturing, as well as a Hackatime extension. Thanks for reading!

7/12/2026Yes, yes, I skipped a day. I’m a tad bit ashamed but whatever, yesterday I fiddled around in KiCad for like 10 minutes before crashing out and not coming back. But today?? Big work was done!! Today I continued following the ratsnests to complete the connections on my PCB. I’m not entirely sure what the next step entails, but I’ll figure that out tommorow. Today I worked on the ratsnest connections for a solid 45 minutes and took screen captures to validate my work. It was actually interesting completing the ratsnest because it was sort of a puzzle. Also, you will probably see in my commits, but the .history file in KiCad keeps messing up my project so I have to keep clearing out the .sch files cached in there, jus saying this to clear things up. I love Onshape and that sort of CAD, so I’m really excited to be headed towards that phase of the project. I’m glad my skills are growing daily.

Devlog #02! I finally finished my schematic and learned the way of journaling! Check out my JOURNAL.md with more detailed summaries of my day’s work! I will finalize my PCB and continue to document and capture screen recordings.

Working on my PCB! Just recorded a timelapse of me struggling with ratsnest! I will look up a tutorial! I plan to have 3 buttons, an action button, a toggle button to flip through actions, such as feeding or playing with the TamaGITchi, and lastly one that will copy/paste a commit message into your terminal to help with efficiency whilst coding.