User:Rnewkirk7954/ENES-100/project 1

Week0 Preferences
This weekend I studied an old music project from a past year. It appeared to be a simple manually powered rhythm sequencer made from a tin can and magnets. Although many of the parts were missing, it was clear how the parts that were there were supposed to fit together. After consulting with my project team, we decided that a BeatBearing rhythm sequencer would be more practical to make than the one I looked at.

Week1 Narrative
I met with my team and we discussed how to start building at BeatBearing rhythm sequencer. I had most of the parts for the wiring harness that I currently knew I needed; all I had to do was design the final wiring harness. Later this week I will work with my team to start assembling the frame and wiring.

Week2 Narrative
Researched a bit about wiring the sequencer. The circuit boards I took home were not much use since the ribbon cable I intend to use (pictured to the right) did not fit anywhere.

I talked with my team about the best way to mount the washers onto the board; at first considered fastening the washer halves with screws but the screw heads would prevent the ball bearing from sitting correctly. Next tried wrapping bare wires around the washer halves and pressing them between the washer and the board, but the wires did not stay wrapped tightly, which might cause shaky, unreliable connection. For now the best course of action would be to follow through with the screws idea.

Before the week is over the board will start being assembled.

Week3 Narrative
This week start assembling the board and figuring out how to put together the wiring harness. So far, the best idea is wrapping wires around washers and gluing them to the board. This eliminates the need for soldering and purchasing extra screws, nuts, and soldering tabs. It will also save time because no soldering will be needed.

I soldered together the pieces for a new MIDI shield, since the old one was assembled incorrectly. Its analog pins were attached to the wrong side of the board, so the shield couldn't sit on top of the arduino. I ended up soldering on new rows of analog pins as well as three switches, two potentiometers, and two MIDI ports. When i finished the soldering, the closeness of the analog pins caused some of the solder to touch the adjacent pins. This caused the arduino to stop functioning when the MIDI shield was connected. A quick swipe of a hot iron tip between each of the pins separated the solder and fixed the issue.

After determining the general schematic for the wiring harness, I played with this program which was somewhat useful in constructing a diagram of the hardware. However, several pieces including megawings and VGA were not available in the program. There was an option to create parts by using a photo of the part, but when attempted that did not work at all (the image of the part was an unidentifiable mass of shapes). Meanwhile, I tried to remove a soldered socket from an unused circuit board, but the socket ended up snapping and falling apart. A new one will be needed.

Week4 Narrative
PROJECT 2 PREFERENCES:
 * 1. Music
 * 2. Music
 * 3. Tribot

I wrote a tutorial on soldering which can be found here

I went back and fixed previous weeks so that it was more clear what I was doing, rather than using "we".

The Fritzing program proved to be useful. I found the parts we were using in the program: