02/09/2018
This week our main focus was on the coding of the GUI and making our surface mount components operational.
Nathan finished etching all of the copper boards with the various circuit layouts for each of our components. We then spent time creating a protocol for reflow soldering the components to the boards. We found that, due to the extremely small width of our lines, spreading a very thin layer of solder paste over the copper and using a directed hot air gun consistently allowed us to avoid clumping of the solder paste that would short our chips. Nathan spent a lot of time attempting to flash one of the microcontroller chips to enable programming through the Arduino IDE, however, he encountered difficulties with both the wiring and software. Getting the microcontroller into a programmable state is a high priority task going into the weekend.
Natalie spent time working on designing and creating the GUI for the physician’s wand. She figured out how to make touch-responsive buttons and designed the action menu and ‘set screen’ page with buttons corresponding to changes in current stimulation amplitude. Together, we figured out how to create a library of functions to keep the main script cleaner and easier to follow. Natalie hopes to have an operational first draft of the GUI by the end of the weekend.
This week our main focus was on the coding of the GUI and making our surface mount components operational.
Nathan finished etching all of the copper boards with the various circuit layouts for each of our components. We then spent time creating a protocol for reflow soldering the components to the boards. We found that, due to the extremely small width of our lines, spreading a very thin layer of solder paste over the copper and using a directed hot air gun consistently allowed us to avoid clumping of the solder paste that would short our chips. Nathan spent a lot of time attempting to flash one of the microcontroller chips to enable programming through the Arduino IDE, however, he encountered difficulties with both the wiring and software. Getting the microcontroller into a programmable state is a high priority task going into the weekend.
Natalie spent time working on designing and creating the GUI for the physician’s wand. She figured out how to make touch-responsive buttons and designed the action menu and ‘set screen’ page with buttons corresponding to changes in current stimulation amplitude. Together, we figured out how to create a library of functions to keep the main script cleaner and easier to follow. Natalie hopes to have an operational first draft of the GUI by the end of the weekend.