ARM Alarm A better alarm clock.

PSU Schematic

Just "finished" with the PSU schematic. (Finished in the sense that it's ready to be tested but still probably won't work yet.) It's a subset of my final board, but it's simple enough that I could do the work in one night and still feel comfortable about pushing it to GitHub. Testing it is a bit far-off, because I have to:

  • Order the boards from Seeed Studio's Fusion PCB service (the price is right). I can't order this week because I'm in Toronto (reading week!) and all my electronics-engineering-related-stuff is in Waterloo. I have to be in town when the package arrives, for reasons I won't detail here, so I don't want to order early.
  • Wait for Seeed to deliver the boards. I think they have a turnaround of about... a week? (in business days) So I might order the boards in a couple of days.
  • Stuff the boards. I don't own an iron, but I borrow my uncle's Solomon soldering station, which works pretty well. I'll have to come BACK to Toronto to use that on the weekend, which could be a while off (mid-March at the earliest). Seeed provides an assembly service, but I'm not going to bend my part choices to match the list of options they provide, and I could use the soldering practice. Never soldered 0603 parts before.
  • Test them. The most interesting part! Also the farthest away. By the end of March my exams start. Not much time to mess around with alarm clocks during that month. Depending on where my co-op for the summer lands me, I should be able to test in... early May or beyond.

So yeah, far off. When I manufacture the full project's board, it'll be the same story. But it's underway, at least! In any case, it feels good to get some more work on this project done, especially with the schematic, which I hadn't worked on for a while before today. Feel free to pore over it and criticize or review it. I could use the help, I'm sure!

Tags: hardware, status