Ordered some new screens!

So I think I've been stagnated on a lot of my projects because I'm bummed out I can't get one of my graphical LCDS to work.

First, I purchased a Graphical OLED display, this one from Newhaven Displays
Its supposedly has a rise and fall time of around 10us. Which means I can do some very high frame-rates with it (even if I do things at 100fps, that's 3 orders of magnitude longer than the minimum switching time).

I'm really hoping I'll have an easy time interfacing this with my USB kit. then we can make some interesting patterns on it, and eventually work on a couple of projects that I think would be neat. Namely some embedded gaming solutions. Im psyched to get them when they come.

Next, I thought I need some simple yet powerful enough LCD's for debugging and showing off basic information.
I picked up a couple 2x16 character LCDs. Three namely; I want to use one in a "kill-a-watt" style power metering device. Another for generic debugging. Finally one for Home circuit breaker and a DIY signal generator generic power supply.

Hopefully they show up soon.

On Applying for Jobs

For the last couple of weeks I've been basically unemployed.  Beyond the odd-job for a friends/family company I've had the luck of being on the job hunt.
I have to say, so far this has not only been the most unrewarding thing I've done this year; it's also a task that seems like a burden to do.

I don't think I had the mentality that many university graduates get that there will be people jumping from all over to give them work. It seems like its just a necessary evil if anyone ever wants to get a job; at least if you don't know someone. Which is where I fit in.

The last 3 or 4 Jobs I've had were all on referral. I didn't give anyone a resume, I barely had anything that can be called an "interview," and since maybe 2008 I haven't actually had to "Job hunt."  Now, coming back to this process has been very frustrating.  I feel like from the beginning the job application process is gamed from both sides. Which is why the entire framework for an application I think needs to be reconsidered and reworked. Especially with the new tools that both employers and job-seekers have at hand.

I never Learn...

I've been playing around with this LED Cube Project for a little while now. After burning myself Friday for hastily making the cub itself. It's come full cycle and bit me again.

This time I put some LEDs in backwards.

So if you are building a project. Take the time to look over the simple things. Sure you just Soldered 25 Led's together. Simple stuff. Check to make sure they are in the right orientation. Because chances are after doing it 150 times you'll screw something up. It saves time in the long run finding a fault early on than debugging and rebuilding sections of the previous step. It's also made this proof of concept look a little junkier than what I wanted.

Ouch!

Took a little over 3 weeks, but I've finally christened this soldering iron with flesh. (which soldering iron? Why my new Hakko FX-888!)

Soldering today I managed to graze the tip with my index finger. Leaving a nice blister right now. Thats smarts!

The PSA of this blog would be to double check where your hands are with respect to the tools you are using. Burns hurt more than cuts. I really want to keep on soldiering through the LED Cube right now, but damn I don't want to get too close to that iron anymore.

Back to the grind.

Well, its back to the grind now. Everyone here is done with their holidays.

I wrote up a cycling and running spreadsheet that will hopefully keep me on track for all the biking running and swimming I want to do this year.

I'm unsure where everyone else logs their runs. But I really like the statistical analysis mine give me. I have standard graphs like Distance vs. Time and a Histogram of activities that I've done.  But additionally because I have a goal in mind (<25min 5k run, <55min 1.5kswim, ??min 20k bike) I can add in normalized/extrapolated times for those goals. Which makes graphing my progress on the same metric very, very easy. Something any website I've found so far very incapable of doing.

Here's a google doc's Link to what I wrote up, its not quite the same as the Excel Version but it does it justice still.

If there's someone who knows of a service that can make the same/similar performance charts, please let me know. I would've thought there would be some more that existed.

All the boards are Soldered!

[Originally Posted December 30, 2011]

That's right! Everything is put together now.  I've also added in the unfortunately left-out pull up resistors on the Character LCD as well as the Development board.  Additionally, I straight up removed the option to power the Development board with a regulator (after I broke it with -12V ...oops).  IT doesn't make sense to have when most projects involve USB communication anyways.

For an Interesting Comparison I pulled out an Arduino and placed it alongside my board.  Both pretty similar. Basically, the same my component selection changes (and mine is a whole lot simpler).

USB Devboard Milestone!

[Originally Posted: December 30 2011]

I got a soldering iron for Christmas. Which has been awesome.  I finished up all of the soldering that I wanted to do from early December. I put some current limiting resistors in the joy pad I made. 

I then finally found a demo Microchip did with the PIC18F4550 which i think is a roundabout way of finding the project I originally based my development board on. Cool!

The demo dealt with playing around with the Generic USB-HID drivers that come with windows. You remember this pane:

Image Credit: devshed.com

Well that's what this demo program that I found works with. We're making a joystick! 

PCB's Soldered, ready for testing.

[Originally Posted: December 21st 2011]

So right now I'm sort of doing 5 projects at the same time. Which while fun; it is way more time consuming than I had anticipated. 

A week ago I got the boards in. And a few days ago I assembled the boards at school (Yup, I knew they would forget to remove my key-access). 

Anyway, I wanted to post some of the results of what I put together. 

First project that I really want to wrap us is the Character LCD Project.  It's all pretty simple circuitry to put together. If you're wondering I just hand-solder all of the surface mount components. That's why I pick things usually no smaller than 0805 in size, or closer than 0.04" apart. I can do smaller parts (I've done many 0603's before) but I just get a headache staring at something that small for so long. 

Character LCD Board Being Assembled

I think if there was a re-design for this board (there won't be by me) I'd get a smaller trim pot. I liked how it was to access this pot from the back when its installed in a case...but it has no holding force, so a good vibration will kick my contrast out of whack.

PCB Order Arrived!

[Originally Posted December 15, 2011]

So after anxiously waiting a couple of weeks. Batch PCB came through and for whatever reason gave me not one, but 2 of each board that I ordered!  I ordered 7 boards and have 14 PCB's laying on my desk. Fantastic! 

So, we have all the boards I mentioned in the previous post here. From left to right:  4550 DevBoard, Joypad Shield, Graphical LCD Board, Stepper Motor Board, Current-Sense Board, Screw-terminal Breakout Board, and the Character LCD Boards.

PCB's are enroute!

[Original Post Date: December 13, 2011]


I just got an email from Batch PCB saying that my panel's worth of boards is making its way to Canada!  This is good news.  I put in one massive order to save on shipping.

There are a total of 7 boards IIRC coming this way. Including:

1. Graphical LCD PCB
2. Character LCD PCB (only been breadboarded at this point)
3. Custom Pic18F4550 Deveopment Board 
4. Gamepad "Shield" for 4550
5. Blank Screw Terminal breakout shield for 4550
6. Kill-a-Watt Current Sense board (we'll see how well this worked) + Voltage regulation
7. Stepper Motor Shield for 4550 Devboard

There's a total of 4 Projects in all of those boards. The Kill-a-watt and Graphical LCD, the Casemod Character LCD. And the multi-role 4550 Development board.

What that means is I really hope I get a good soldering iron for Christmas..the Mastercraft one here now won't do the trick.

Very exciting! Hopefully I can post some images soon and see what kind of quality we have.

Time for a migration!

So, I made up a google site's page to showcase a few of the projects I wanted to work on and it made sense there to have a blog.  But I have this one still... So, what to do? We'll I'm going to try to embed this one in the other page. This system is much better at keeping track of things, but its a far cry from a website. The website is better for customization, but lacks the blog-specific tooling that I'd like to have for at least one page.  So for the next couple of hours I'm going to try to copy over the (like 6) Posts I made to my "blog" on that site. Whether or not this is successful we will only be able to see in a bit.