Week 10 - Input devices

Assignment – measure something: add a sensor to a microcontroller board that you’ve designed and read it

Workflow

I choose to make the step response board with the aim of adding a touch pad sensor as I will need one for my final project and want to understand how it works. I made both the loading and transmit boards using the Modella.  Feeling quite at home with this making process now which is great and my soldering improving too! As I am new to electronics I choose to make the boards first, then work through the process of adding a touch sensor and measuring something to understand the process and come back to how I could change the design.

The steps I worked through

 
Made the 2 step response boards

Using a Mac I downloaded the PySerial  in terminal

type   sudo python setup.py install

Downloaded all step response files and made a new directory on the desktop

Load boards

hello.load.45.cad

hello.load.45.c makefile

hello.load.45.py video

transmit-recieve

hello.txrx.45.cad

hello.txrx.45.c makefile

hello.txrx.45.py video

Programming

I studied the AT tiny 45 data sheet below

 NEXT

Connect board with FAB ISP and Flash the microcontroller 

Using my  FABISP  

Terminal output when board is being flashed

I made a simple touchpad

and got these responses from the touch pad see below

I then had a go at designing my own board in Eagle adding an LED

What next   

•  explore making a touch pad using textiles, paper and conductive thread for my final project
• get programming
• make some more boards