02/16/2018
This week we made quite a bit of progress with regard to circuitry and the graphic user interface (GUI).
Nathan finally succeeded in bootloading the Atmega328PB and is making use of its internal 8MHz crystal oscillator to save space within the screw cap. He then manually mapped out the functions and addresses of all 32 pins so that it will be easier to program moving forward. He also got the digital potentiometer set up and functioning so that its resistance can be controlled using the Atmega328PB’s I2C pins. Building off of that circuit, he added our voltage regulator such that the potentiometer makes the entire circuit a digitally adjustable current source. It was nice validation of the huge amounts of calculations we did earlier in the project seeing the output current be adjustable between 10uA to 300uA.
Natalie has made a lot of progress with our GUI. She spent the week building more screens/layers and making the buttons touch-interactive. She also solved a problem in which certain buttons appeared far more reactive than others. Touch functionality works via an “if” function that responds when touch is recorded within certain x and y parameters. After debugging, she found that if two buttons have overlapping x coordinates but different y coordinates or vice versa, the if statements needed to be layered to avoid cutting out functionality of the lower button. She is now beginning to link pages and layers of the GUI together and working on saving variables that are entered into and modified by the GUI.
This week we made quite a bit of progress with regard to circuitry and the graphic user interface (GUI).
Nathan finally succeeded in bootloading the Atmega328PB and is making use of its internal 8MHz crystal oscillator to save space within the screw cap. He then manually mapped out the functions and addresses of all 32 pins so that it will be easier to program moving forward. He also got the digital potentiometer set up and functioning so that its resistance can be controlled using the Atmega328PB’s I2C pins. Building off of that circuit, he added our voltage regulator such that the potentiometer makes the entire circuit a digitally adjustable current source. It was nice validation of the huge amounts of calculations we did earlier in the project seeing the output current be adjustable between 10uA to 300uA.
Natalie has made a lot of progress with our GUI. She spent the week building more screens/layers and making the buttons touch-interactive. She also solved a problem in which certain buttons appeared far more reactive than others. Touch functionality works via an “if” function that responds when touch is recorded within certain x and y parameters. After debugging, she found that if two buttons have overlapping x coordinates but different y coordinates or vice versa, the if statements needed to be layered to avoid cutting out functionality of the lower button. She is now beginning to link pages and layers of the GUI together and working on saving variables that are entered into and modified by the GUI.