Integration

A "new fashioned" televisor, using an Arduino to drive the motor and display.

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Integration

Postby Andrew Davie » 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.

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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....
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Andrew Davie
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Re: Integration

Postby Andrew Davie » Sat May 27, 2017 11:28 pm

I've made a start. I thought I'd put in some power "rails" first, and "socket" for the Arduino microcontroller. The Arduino has a really weird 34 pin package, so I had to build my own socket using the strips of connectors, cut to 17 long. The rails carry the GND and 5V signals - the line through the centre is 5V and it leads to a rail on top and bottom of the board. The other edges (left/right) hold the GND signals. The in/out connectors will go along the left and right edges, and I figured GND was most likely to be needed there.

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integrate1.jpg
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I know it's awful soldering; I do have access to a lovely soldering station and microscope at work - but this was done with my home 40W iron with the 15yo tip and little magnification. It's pretty hacky... but let's go with it and see how it comes along.

The plan is to NOT have the Arduino in its socket, but instead build the various subsystems onto this board, wired to the correct pin in the "socket", but use a jumper wire from the top-side taking that pin to the breadboard and correct pin on the actual Arduino. That is, I'm going to slowly graft components onto this board, but move the Arduino itself very last thing. So I'll keep the functional "lash-up" working at all times, and just move the subsystems over - and re-validate they work by jumpering to the original. Finally I'll just plug in the Arduino to the new board and it should all work. Them's the plans.
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Andrew Davie
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Re: Integration

Postby Andrew Davie » Sun May 28, 2017 2:04 am

Right. I've had a change of heart/mind. I'm going to teach myself how to design and etch a proper circuit board for this. It's not going to be too much of a diversion, and I think I'll have fun learning. The idea is that I can etch a few boards in case anyone wants to build their own. It will be neater, more reliable, and easier to build. I don't want to get 80% of the way into my build and then realise I have poor routing, for example. So, this thread on hold for a while and I'll be dealing with the "build your own circuit board" in a new thread.
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Andrew Davie
"Gomez!", "Oh Morticia."
 
Posts: 1590
Joined: Wed Jan 24, 2007 4:42 pm
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