Wood and Solder @gregdaly - Tumblr Blog

This is almost like playing snake on wood!

#woodworking #DIY Projects #oak #planing

Starting to carve out all the areas for the electronics and routing out the tracks for the wires.

#woodworking #DIY Projects #oak #carving

Slots for the capacitative buttons cut out, on testing it's not deep enough for me to get a big enough signal to tell each button apart. Since I'm more than half way through I'll be using my router plane for more accurate depth control.

#arduino #wood #woodworking #DIY Projects #electronics

Programmed, hooked up to the Bluetooth module and running off an external 12V supply. Everything's working when tested, capacitative sensor values were quite different on the ground of this power supply. Now all I have to do is chop the slots for the Pro Mini, Bluefruit and foil pieces, then route out the channels for the wires between them.

#electronics #arduino #DIY Projects

So I've swapped out the Trinket for a Pro Mini 5V, since I'm not using all the pins it means I can add more functionality in the future if I want. Everything soldered on and programming it with my trusty FTDI cable. It's also one of the limited edition Sparkfun black Pro Mini 5V!

#electronics #soldering #programming #DIY Projects

paulcanbuildthat replied to your post: All the parts are cut and fitted out, ...

greg: what are the “electronic” guts for this? I’m thinking this would make an interesting addition for myself as a kind of butler tray. Based on your other posts, it looks like you’re adding a keyboard controller. What’s the goal?

Hi Paul, you're exactly right. The bluetooth module is a HID device so it can act as a keyboard, mouse game pad, even a golf club! To start with I've programmed programmed three functions on an Arduino to send the multimedia keys for play/pause and skip track and a combined key press to trigger a workflow in Alfred. The bluetooth module is paired with my Mac.

The bits of tin foil are the capacitative touch sensors and are going to be embedded in the wood. I'm planning on painting out the symbols on top in lacquer.

Once it's all finished I'm planning on doing a proper full page write up of the entire thing.

#paulcanbuildthat

With the electronics all prototyped it's time to actually solder everything together!

#electronics #soldering #DIY Projects

All the parts are cut and fitted out, just needs sanding, glueing the mortice peg for the watch and finishing. The electronic guts are almost finished too.

#DIY Projects #wood #woodworking

Capacitive Touch. It's what your phone screen does and lets you create seamless buttons the require no force to press. It also goes through wood.

#arduino #seeedstudio #adafruit #electronics #DIY Projects

Always ALWAYS test things. Find the simplest thing that is can do and you know will work and do it! There's nothing worse than finding out after a few hours that the reason something won't work is because the hardware is broke. In this case everything works just fine.

#DIY Projects #electronics #bluetooth #adafruit

Firstly we must prototype! For that I use a Seeeduino v3.0, which is an Arduino Uno clone from Seeed Studios. It has got a few handy alterations that make it more useful for testing things. The switches at the front allow you to change the logic levels to 5V, 3V3 or bypass the regulator at your own peril; turn off auto reset, sticks the reset button on the side facing out and uses a USB mini connector.

#electronics #arduino #seeedstudio #DIY Projects #hacks

Sorry for the lack of anything this week, run up to Christmas is busy at work. Back on track - We can't forget the electronics! The core of this build is the Adafruit Trinket 5V microcontroller, which has an ATtiny85 and is about the size of two 5p pieces. The hard work is honestly being done by the Bluefruit EZ-Key. It's a HID keyboard emulator and handles the entire bluetooth stack, I'm just feeding it serial commands. So Limor Fried (Lady Ada) did all the work writing bluetooth firmware.

#electronics #DIY Projects #adafruit #lady ada #bluetooth