Before you dive in, why not listen to the music I listened to while working on my projects?
Hello! Thanks for coming by and checking out my amazing journey through my 6 week stay at Blue Stamp Engineering. My name is Paris. At this moment in time, I am a senior at the Denver School of Science and Technology based in Green Valley Ranch.
“So what have I done?”
Good question hypothetical man (or women) of the internet! During the 6 weeks of pure awesome, I did two projects; an easy-peasy starter project and an intensive project to occupy the rest of my time. The intensive project I did was creating a huge knock off (The I Ring) of the apple IWatch. In essence, a wearable that can be interacted with by a gesture.
From Pieces to Master Piece
Milestone 3: Finished Simple Product
After waiting an hour for the ring chassis to print (which was actually really fun to observe), I stuck the Mircroview OLED into it and glued on a ring to the bottom of it. Hey-presto, it is now a wearable, and it works.
<IMBED>
Milestone 2: Soldered and working
Honestly, I was expecting more bumps in the road akin to Milestone 1. However, it was pretty easy going. Just like checking faulty wiring, it is good to check where wires should be! Here, the device works when powered by a small 40mAH lithium ion battery. Gestures work and the accelerometer registers the user’s inputs.
Milestone 1: Working code and gestures
I mention in the video that this wasn’t the original Milestone 1; this was for good reason. I encountered life as an engineer with everything I know to my project and hold dear to myself to go wrong. If the starter project was Advil then this was an adrenaline shot to the heart. On review, following Milestone 1 (to solder everything together for Milestone 2), I overlooked all the schematics to see what exactly I could have screwed up on. Come to find one of the schematics for the guide I was following was WRONG (and there was also faulty wires). Case in point, don’t believe everything you see on the internet and check yourself before you wreck yourself..
Breaking the Ice for Engineering
In a nutshell, the starter project I choose to do was a small kit and guide to build a sound sensitive light organ. The kit I used is called the “Exploding Star Color Organ” from the Electronic Goldmine. It was fairly easy to do being that I have previous circuit and soldering experience. In total, it took me 4 hours to completely finish the kit and have it work exactly how it should.
I go into a little more detail here:
Short for time and can’t watch the video?
In point, I talk about:
- What the project is
- How it works
- What I learned from this – I learned how to read a resistor
- What a struggle I encountered was – I soldered a transistor into the wrong place