LOG 6: I cooked the Pi

Bad news this time.

The 3AM Incident

Momo walks, but I hadn’t touched the mic or speaker at all yet. So I was up at 3am soldering the mic and the amp together, planning to get audio working and then move Momo into the full black assembly the next day. Was actually really excited for it.

Then a blob of solder flew off and landed on the Pi.

I saw it land, wiped it off quick and got it out, and just kept soldering. Figured I’d test everything once I was done. Finished up, plugged in just the Pi on its own to test audio, and nothing. No light. Dead.

That one hurt. The Pi was around $50 and now I’m waiting like 3 days for a replacement, right when I was ready to actually assemble everything.

Making Use of the Wait

Didn’t want to just sit around so I kept going on the parts I could.

Assembled the final legs. These are the ones actually going on Momo after all the prototyping and the CAD changes from testing. Good to have those done.

Also grabbed an ESP32 I had lying around and used it to test the mic and the speaker. Took me a while to figure out since I’ve never really done audio stuff before, but I got there and it was a solid learning experience. At least now I know the audio parts themselves work.

What’s Next

Once the new Pi shows up I’m assembling everything into the main body. Screen, servos, PCA9685, all of it mounted properly.

The other thing I have to sort out is wiring. Right now the wiring takes up more space than Momo does, which is not great. It looks bigger and messier than the actual robot. So I need to lock in and figure out proper cable management before final assembly.

Plan is to clean Momo up as much as I can so he’s ready to wire the moment the parts land.

RIP Pi. -$100.