February 13, 2024

“Bug Hunting”

Day

9

8:05 AM

Today’s goal: find the bugs I noticed yesterday, and squash them. That’s number my number one task. It will make the proof of concept work much more seamlessly.

Once that’s finished, I think I need to pivot to the hardware design and get that moving. I need to have a sample of what this is really going to look like, instead of a placeholder that works but is in the wrong form (and has only half the functionality due to hardware limitations!).

To work!

9:31 AM

Fixing the bugs took less time than expected. I’m actually more and more looking forward to putting a real interface on this thing; it’s going to be pretty slick.

Of course, I’m also discovering that bits of this are going to be far more complex than I had previously assumed. This is what happens when you deal with data from external sources, the content of which you do not control. It’s going to be a challenge to do correctly, and I’m oddly intrigued by that challenge.

For now, though, time to go get food, and then… hardware design!

11:46 AM

Rabbit holes, rabbit holes, rabbit holes…

Was plowing through the JLCPCB parts catalog, and that sucked up the rest of the morning. On the upside, I think I know which parts I’m going to use. I’ll start the actual design work this afternoon.

In the mean time… lunch!

2:45 PM

Plod, plod, plod…

Hardware design takes time, and most of that is research.

I need a break.

7:13 PM

Ok. I’ve been buried in part specifications and numerous other things all day, and I just looked up and it’s a lot later than I would have expected. Where did the time go?

I’m done.

I have most of the schematic done, just niggling over a power issue and how to solve it. I’ll figure it out tomorrow.