Final Product!

In preparation for my presentation, I've been working mainly on my poster and my visual presentation (more to come on that). However, I also spent the conclusion of my internship working on a final product that I can have at my presentation and to turn in. Now, if you haven't already please take a moment to read the blog on the Adafruit LED Ring.

While that blog gives you an overview of the coding behind my final product, this post is geared towards the hardware end of things.

To actually write and program the code I used a program called MPLab. It is a basic program that anyone can download off the internet and it helps teach you about the coding process. The program itself was very basic which was nice given I was someone new to coding. The picture below shows you what my screen would have looked like.

After the code is written, it (in overly simplified terms) gets sent to a device named "pickit3" which is also a product available on the internet. This takes the data and converts it into a readable language for the microchip.

After that, some magic (just kidding... coding and engineering) makes the LED ring light up in the way you specified in the code.

Below is a photo of what this set up looks like!


The most challenging part of this project was the coding. However, another learning opportunity arose when we needed to find a data port on the microchip. I had to use the schematic and data sheet to find a single pin (out of 100 options) that fit the needed requirements. Not only was this quite a bit tedious, but it had a lot of trial and error. I would find one pin and think it would work and then some little detail made it just enough off for it not to work properly.

This showed me that engineering is about identifying and end goal and then taking risks in the steps you take to get there. It's about failing a few times, but above that, about learning how to grow out of failures!

I love my final product! Come by my table to see the final product at presentations May 6!