It worked…eventually

I’m a K?

For our class marquee we’re making the phrase “It worked before”.  And while I thought the layout for my LED circuit had been fairly easy to resolve, my first attempt at actually milling the letter board was terrible. There was some unfortunate noise, a gouge in the board, and my mill bit is pretty much a stump…

But that’s ok! Because kind people will lend you theirs while you order a new one and the second attempt worked out fine.

Moving on to the controller board – I didn’t change much from the version given to us. Just swapped out the 5 pin spot for 3 female headers to match the back of my PIR. And my first try (though not as unfortunate as the letter) was once again not entirely successful. But this time I at least didn’t break the bit!

Second try? Much better…

With both of my boards cut and a good 2 hours of soldering later, I had a K full of LEDs. Should it have taken that long? Probably not. But I can at least say I’m faster now.

Before moving on to the controller board I wanted to test out my K to make sure I’d connected everything correctly.

And only one side lit up.

I’m pretty sure at one point I’d connected both sides of my power in the schematic? But whether I imagined it, or accidentally deleted it, it doesn’t matter because by the time I made it to milling, that connection was gone.

So instead of making a new board when this one was otherwise fine, there’s now a wire soldered to the back and bridging the sides together. And the entire things lights up fine!

After that the controller was straight forward to get done. I did find a tiny copper bridge that didn’t get milled out (if you scroll back up to the picture of it, you can find it between the 3 holes in the middle at the bottom) but that was an easy fix to scratch off.

And here they are together –

The PIR drops into those 3 female headers at the bottom, though I probably should have moved the capacitors out a little bit to give it a little more breathing room.