Project Thorax

tvs diodes are the bane of my existence(right now)

these things are so annoying i swear i have to add them everywhere apparently to protect my pcb from esd which i supposed is a good thing but its so annoying and its another component i have to add which is taking away time from when my project can be reviewed…

anyhow here is my updated schematic for those that care :D

thats all of the stuff ive done! please leave a heart, follow, and comment if you are interested in this stuff bc it helps me and you out! you find out more about my project and i get more traffic and potentially funding :) 

p.s. HOW DID I ROLL A ZERO AND THEN A PLUS FOURRRR

OMG MY SCHEMATIC IT LOOKS SO GOOD

so. many. things.

another late night devlog!

so the two big things we have are the removal of yet another component, and switching out our power source!

• i removed the voltage regulator as this pcb is mostly just for detection and not actual movement - that will be much later way after i get the testing and data down to a science

• because i no longer needed the humongous amount of power, i can now switch my power source to usb-c! it will be much more efficient and less complicated - only complaint is now i need to figure out voltage regulator i need bc usb-c gives out 5v by default

other changes/news:
i swapped the direction of the indicator led because thats how it works apparently with voltage drains or something

i added some boot pin jumpers since you can never be too safe with what pins should and shouldnt be plugged in!

i asked people on the kicad server to review my stuff(they are SO kind and helpful) and they gave me quite a few tips:

• clean up my schematic(tbh this is long overdue that thing is a MESS ) so that they can actually understand stuff - one dude added a video on all the common practices for schematics so ill be looking at that

  • they also said to add netlabels so its much cleaner(i saw how they look and its GORGEOUS)

• add ESD protection - very important so i dont damage my components(they mentioned something about TVS diodes which i need to look into)

• buy some good books! i’ve been looking into the like college level textbook material for learning electricity and its fundamentals at its core using my library materials, but the kicad people recommended some other texts and said they may be available online for free!

also btw i got a shirt from zach latta himself! super awesome day for me :)

thats all of the stuff ive done in the past few days! please leave a heart, follow, and comment if you are interested in this stuff bc it helps me and you out! you find out more about my project and i get more traffic and potentially funding :) 

Lots more to be told!

first off - i think i broke my streak merely bc i FORGOT TO PUBLISH THE LAPSEE NOOOOOO

i finished the i2c wiring which is good!

i have the spectral sensor, the bluetooth chip and the voltage regulator(it had two sets of i2c ports!) all hooked up to my mcu’s i2c bus

i also added the clocks for both the bluetooth and the mcu!

i am currently trying to figure out what on earth BOOT pins do on the esp32 because once i figure that out im done with it!(technically i could add a jtag but those things are EXPENSIVE OMG )

thats all for today tho! please leave a heart, follow, and comment if you are interested in this stuff bc it helps me and you out! you find out more about my project and i get more traffic and potentially funding :) 

Late night devlog :)

another BIG change is in order!

today we figured out the bluetooth low energy chips(BLE chips or as i like to say bleh chips) are LOW energy for a reason - they cant do constant data reporting and also cant transmit that much data

solution? switch to good ol’ esp32! never did me wrong :D (to be fair tho i never used it so it never had the chance )

real talk tho its WAY easier to understand due to actually good documentation and many references and blogs and youtube videos about it

also learned a good bit about crystal oscillators - they are essentially physical clocks to know the time or timing for a certain action ex. the rate at which to take photos or to send bluetooth signals

overall pretty important stuff but this bluetooth will take another 6 hours i anticipate at the very least

thats all for today tho! please leave a heart, follow, and comment if you are interested in this stuff bc it helps me and you out! you find out more about my project and i get more traffic and potentially funding :)

big update!
soooo many changes to tell you about!
all in ONE devlog :)

so big news - we finished half of the peripherals!
a quick summary of what happened and some details of each change

• DOWNGRADED from usb-c 3.1 to 2.0

  • so basically 3.1 is useless for anything less than some kind of special data format that needs to be transferred ex. video, audio, 3d mesh, etc. so 2.0 is MORE than enough :) (totally not because i was getting a headache from figuring out where to put the 3.1 pins on my mcu and decided to just say 2.0 is enough )

• ADDED 16mb flash serial memory

  • i realized that while an sd card is GREAT for lots of data sending and backup storage and allat, it is INCREDIBLY slow and this is why we need the pcb equivalent of RAM for our detector software(pls dont rob me for my ram )

• ADDED indicator LED for usb-c port

  • figured this might be useful and also pretty :D

current task - bluetooth
i CANNOT figure out this bluetooth chip it has so many pins its so scary ahhh im going to be spending quite a few hours figuring this one out

also btw YES i did make my own format im so sorry its so bad 😭

edit - this is my best performing devlog! thank you guys so much for all your help and support :)

yo i finished sd card wiring guys!!! what component next???(i was thinking usb-c)

took a LOT of cross reference to adafruit stuff and some online research, but i finally did sd card wiring lmk if theres anything amiss that you see :)

finished power wiring!

also found out that Altium(an industry standard pcb software!) offers free student accounts to people in school! after i finish this project, i may make it again in altium!

Woah! too many hours logged and not enough devlogs lol

so the past two days ive been trying to decrypt all these random documents that talk about how to wire different things and what pins do what
however, after looking through all of these, I’ve come to the conclusion that 1. I still have a LOT to learn 😭and 2. i should prolly take the components 1 by 1

i started trying to wire up the usb-c(which i replaced with the kicad generic one ooh so fancy looking!), but ran into a problem while looking for the capacitors some reference documents say they use

in the second image i have, you can see in all 5 pixels what the image says(seriously though if anyone knows what it says lmk)

so right now im on the hunt for the correct capacitors for the project

also thought i should share that the hackpad stardust prize is RIDICUOUSLY low - ONE stardust are we serious???

lots of stuff going on!
very happy to say i did a lot of work recently :D

so first off i made a new banner for my project lmk if u like him :)

ive been doing some research on different components im gonna need and also attempting to itemize my stuff so it s easier to visualize - i gotta say looking to be more expensive than i thought

today i mostly looked at step-down voltage converters(essentially make sure that electricity doesnt flow at a rate too high for electronics) and bluetooth chips that are low energy(nordic semiconductor is looking very promising!)

only problems i currently have is first FINDING THIS BLUETOOTH CHIP FOOTPRINT AND SYMBOL I CANT FIND IT ANYWHERE AND I DONT WANT TO HAVE TO SPEND HOURS JUST MAKING IT IN KICAD and second just understanding wiring and what different pins actually do

also thought i should share that im chrome tab maxxing rn

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1EHGDPYE_L2ZDA2Ll7cWK8OQcedOOThalmhql7GgHQ5M/edit?usp=sharing
^^parts doc

also thought i should say that ive seen an uptick in ai devlogs so i wanted to take a moment to ask all of you to write your own devlogs please it adds a lot more character :)

first off - Documentation is INSANE bro these devs are not paid enough

anyways i just wanted to post an update of the schematic rq and also wanted to share i rerolled a +0 BRO HOW DOES THIS HAPPEN

Digikey and Mouser Struggles
For much of this stage of attempting to find the parts I need, I ran into many problems with the parts vendors and their bot detection and sign in methods

they were spotchy at best and i ended up having to switch sites twice just to get the files needed - and im not even sure if i have the right files yet lol

Component Choice and Scale Issues

Today, I was trying to get all my components into the schematic so I can start to do the math for all the voltages and other components needed and stuff like that. Easy right? Wrong. Finding the components was the easiest part(although there was a mixup with the battery pack where certain details weren’t listed so I had to message the seller). The hard part for today was figuring how to set a scale in the schematic. Obviously this is very important so I can set a size for my battery pack, but I couldn’t find anything anywhere for my software of choice. I am considering switching to KiCAD(after all, I just need to add a few components), but I’ll have to see what can be done about the scale stuff. If I can figure that out, the next step will be to add the other components necessary for function.

This is my first ever devlog! Quite exciting :D
anyways this is supposed to just be some git testing to make sure my repo is setup to be public and receive commits, im still not too sure how to do this with PCBs but ill figure it out