Day 3: TechTop Workshop

Day 3 at Techtop Workshop

Today we learned how to use a mill machine to create circuit boards out of copper plate. Using software, we used the circuit we designed on Eagle and had the software create the path map for the circuit. It also used our inputted depth for cutting and type of drill bit. We used a 1/64 drill bit for make the actual circuit and then had to carefully change the drill bit to 1/32 for the outside carving of the board to make it into a cutout square. Zeroing the x and y axis is done by the machine using the software, but we have to manually adjust the drill bit to zero in the z axis. My group initially didn't zero the z axis correctly and therefore had to redo the outside cutting of the circuit. 

After we had the board, we then had to solder each of the components onto the circuit board. The copper board allowed the circuits to be connected where it should be as wire but not the components that need to be soldered on correctly to allow the components to be used. 

On the circuit board we soldered on ATtiny 44 IC chip, 10k Ω resistors, capacitor, LED, and an electrical connector. We will use this as our basis in the device that we will create by adding other components on. 

Currently the ideas our group has are:

• a temperature and humidity sensor for transporting goods and hospitals that sends an SMS when the temperature/humidity is not at the correct value
• a Smart Container that will use sensors to know the temperature and humidity of the container and adjust them to the correct inputted/desired value (could be powered by the car)
• Bus and train GPS tracking app (could include crowdedness and time of arrival)
• carpooling app to reduce traffic

Tomorrow we will go into the lab (hopefully) and begin building the device. If we ever pick something to do.