I’m working towards the closure of the demo version. The tailor had finished last week and most of the wiring was done. With all the custom print boards the vest has turned out rather stiff and armour like. Not very comfortable… The boards are a little bigger than expected and the flat cables that connect the boards are also a bit rigid. I’ll have to fold them and perhaps use some glue to make them stay compact and flat.
I had to attach the last few wires connecting the buttons and the nice switch I made for the 7.2 Volt battery pack. I still don’t know what I did wrong but as soon as I switched on this battery pack I started smelling something, I looked at the battery pack and it was melting! Well, some wires were definitely crossed… I decided to call my friend Richard, a programmer and electronic engineer, to help me with the final wiring and the code for driving three displays instead of just one. He was very kind to help me on a Saturday.
We had everything connected and had uploaded the program which worked. Instead of the conductive fabric rings we used the board with LEDs for testing purposes. But alas non of the LEDs would turn on. Wanting to check the serial monitor while running the program we kept the FTDI board for uploading attached to the Arduino whilst also connecting the 6 AA batteries. Again a bad smell and smoke. I’d fried my FTDI board. But I only discovered that later when I tried to upload the improved software for three displays. So I had to order a new one which again held up my progress for two days. The gentleman from the shop said I’d also ruined my Arduino but that turned out not to be the case. I took the opportunity to improve the wiring and make all the pins pluggable.
Now I’ve got everything set up right. I’ve adjusted my code to make the status LED blink every time bytes are send. The software works but at some point there’s a problem with the hardware. I’ll be paying Paul a final visit tomorrow to sort this out. Then I can work on the code again and do a simple video on Saturday.
I made some recordings earlier this week but it is just too cold to film. The batteries die very fast. Another thing I’ve discovered is that it’s very hard/impossible to heat up the bigger rings when the temperature is below say 15 degrees. I’ll have to postpone the recordings until spring comes.