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A MORE ADVANCED LOOK INTO ELECTRONICS

COMPARING DATA SHEETS

DATA SHEET #1: ATtiny412
DATA SHEET #2: RP2040

They both share a similar page count (585 and 642 respectively). ATtiny datasheet covers multiple different microcontroller models of the same family, meaning a variety of pinouts are provided for each specific model. The RP2040 is the only model covered in its datasheet however. Its pinout, compared to the 8-pin ATtiny412, is much larger and of course has many more pins. The ATtiny has a diagram for its memory, whereas the RP2040 does not, instead having a longer table as a descriptive measure. The ATtiny has an 8bit processor and the RP2040 has a 32bit dual core processor. The ATtiny has 4kb of RAM and the RP2040 has 264kb of RAM. The ATtiny is typically programmed by an external programmer, whereas the RP2040 can be programmed straight from a computer interface similar to an Arduino.

BUILDING PROGRAMMER FROM ARDUINO NANO

Programmer instructions
Finished programmer

BOARD DESIGN + CUTTING

This week I chose to play it safe on the design side of things because of my failure in Week 4. I wanted a successful board, and thought that the real triumph would come from the soldering side of things as that is what intimidates me the most. I followed David's tutorial on KiCad design very closely to ensure I didn't mess everything up. I included a prayer to the PCB gods in the bottom left. Will my prayers be heard? I hope so...

Board schematic Board layout

One of my worries was that the Carvera would carve out the traces inversed again, but this didn't happen, so I thankfully only had to cut my board once. I then used the multimeter to check for shorts, and as I expected, there were shorts everywhere. I dug out my traces with an x-acto knife and after about 20 minutes there were no more shorts, and all the pads were connected where they should be. Phew!

SOLDERING

I used the solder paste and NeoDen oven for all the components save for the headers. It took me some time as I have shaky hands and was trying to be extra careful not to accidentally short to ground, but my first attempt thankfully proved successful.

Half soldered board

After I soldered the two headers with the iron. It was difficult to get the headers to stay in place while soldering the first pin. I used masking tape for the first header and the clip holders for the second. With some time I was able to solder the pins of both headers. Unfortunately I accidentally knocked off the 4-pin I2C header (I guess I didn't solder it on well enough) but my 3-pin header stayed put. I was going to resolder the 4-pin header after testing my board but I later chose not to for reasons (foreshadowing...)

Fully soldered board

FINAL BOARD + FLASHING

Wired up board Wired up programmer and board
Terminal errors

I ran into my inevitable issue here. Power was being properly administered to my board, as the LED does light up when plugged in, but I receive an error when attempting to flash the code through arduino.
I tested with David's setup and found that both my computer and drivers were working and my programmer was also doing what it should be. So the problem, as one would expect, was in my board. I checked with the multimeter and found no shorts. I made sure to check the top of all the ATtiny412 pins and make sure they were connected where they should be, and found no issues. Looking up the errors I was recieving wasn't much of a help, as it could point to a lot of things. I ruled out it being my software, my usb cable, my programmer, and there being shorts (at least I think). Which leads me to theorize that my ATtiny412 is faulty. Which is VERY SAD because I thought I had success up until this point. D=
Overall, despite not getting all the way through this week's tasks sucessfully, I did find success in the part that seemed the scariest: that being soldering. For my shaky hands and difficulty focusing my eyes I'd say I did pretty well this time with both the solder paste approach as well as the solder iron. This gave me more confidence in using these tools and when I inevitably go to remake my board, I think I'll work through these steps faster. I also think I'd be able to play around with board layout more so.

Q1 FINAL PROJECT PITCH

I am interested in doing the group for the furniture/room theme. I think it'd make it easier to think of an idea if it is meant to relate to other projects. With this theme in mind, I am considering doing something with time, maybe some sort of clock that has planner functionality. I struggle with time management and staying productive, so I think something that could break your hours into chunks would be useful. I learned from executive functioning classes that working for set chunks of time and taking breaks in between is a way to maximum productivity and focus. It depends on what we are learning in the next few weeks, but maybe a screen could be hooked up as well as text to speech to announce next time period (either working/studying, break, drink water, etc). The user could also maybe have customization over how long they want their breaks and work periods to be. If the screen is too difficult then maybe a neopixel LED could be used matched to a color code.