Integration
Posted: Sat May 27, 2017 12:58 am
It's Time!
I have a rat's-nest of wiring and boards and power supplies. Now it's time to bring it all together. Everything is more or less working now, but the device is 'fragile' - a bump here, a knock there, and wires are loose or disconnected. The breadboard doesn't hold the wires quite as firmly as I'd like, and I've had to daisy-chain some of the connections. Occasionally something stops working and it usually traces to a loose wire in the hugely complex looking mess. So it's time to 'integrate', as I said.
I've decided to abandon the goal of a 5cm x 7cm board and go slightly bigger, so will be building on a 7 cm x 9.5 cm board.
I plan to use this 'thread' to show the progress of the integration build. Since I have two of the above boards in-hand at the moment, and spares of all the components, I will probably build two of them in tandem. What I'm going to try and do is keep the functional 'rats nest' intact, and build replacement bits for each of the major functional units; the sound, the motor controller, the LED controller, the LED matrix, and whatever else I've missed.
It's all going to be powered by a single 12V 1A power brick - hoping that will be sufficient. So the existing 22V LED matrix will not work, of course. But as I 'graft' bits onto the single board implementation, I can fix that up with a new matrix when I get to that point. Right now I might as well start with the sound circuit - just a resistor, a capacitor, and of course the tiny amp board. I won't pre-plan where everything goes; I'll just try and eyeball it. But I'll put the Arduino on the board first (socketed) and the sound circuit will go on the same side as the PWM output pin, for example. I will endeavour not to make my wiring too "all over the place". I have stiff single-strand coated wire suitable for laying up a circuit board underside. Since the PWM pin #6 is on the "left" side of the Arduino, and there's a GND pin that side, too, then it makes sense for the sound board to be on that side, too
I'm thinking of starting by putting a solid wire around the perimeter which will be common ground, so everything has an easy route direct to ground.
There are going to be a bunch of connectors, and everything will screw-in to these, rather than being hard-soldered. So, off the top of my head...
1) 12V in
2) IR out
3) IR in
4) motor out
5) LED out
6) speaker out
7) Nextion CD
Watch this space, I guess....
I have a rat's-nest of wiring and boards and power supplies. Now it's time to bring it all together. Everything is more or less working now, but the device is 'fragile' - a bump here, a knock there, and wires are loose or disconnected. The breadboard doesn't hold the wires quite as firmly as I'd like, and I've had to daisy-chain some of the connections. Occasionally something stops working and it usually traces to a loose wire in the hugely complex looking mess. So it's time to 'integrate', as I said.
I've decided to abandon the goal of a 5cm x 7cm board and go slightly bigger, so will be building on a 7 cm x 9.5 cm board.
I plan to use this 'thread' to show the progress of the integration build. Since I have two of the above boards in-hand at the moment, and spares of all the components, I will probably build two of them in tandem. What I'm going to try and do is keep the functional 'rats nest' intact, and build replacement bits for each of the major functional units; the sound, the motor controller, the LED controller, the LED matrix, and whatever else I've missed.
It's all going to be powered by a single 12V 1A power brick - hoping that will be sufficient. So the existing 22V LED matrix will not work, of course. But as I 'graft' bits onto the single board implementation, I can fix that up with a new matrix when I get to that point. Right now I might as well start with the sound circuit - just a resistor, a capacitor, and of course the tiny amp board. I won't pre-plan where everything goes; I'll just try and eyeball it. But I'll put the Arduino on the board first (socketed) and the sound circuit will go on the same side as the PWM output pin, for example. I will endeavour not to make my wiring too "all over the place". I have stiff single-strand coated wire suitable for laying up a circuit board underside. Since the PWM pin #6 is on the "left" side of the Arduino, and there's a GND pin that side, too, then it makes sense for the sound board to be on that side, too
I'm thinking of starting by putting a solid wire around the perimeter which will be common ground, so everything has an easy route direct to ground.
There are going to be a bunch of connectors, and everything will screw-in to these, rather than being hard-soldered. So, off the top of my head...
1) 12V in
2) IR out
3) IR in
4) motor out
5) LED out
6) speaker out
7) Nextion CD
Watch this space, I guess....