JP of the Heavens - Part 1

Well i think i said something about doing another post on russian, but that's going to hafta wait i suppose... i don't have the time really to do that... why not you may be asking. Well that is a good question and i have an answer for you, JP!

so it is my Junior year at Oregon Institute of Technology and that means Junior Project. JP is a team project where we plan design and build something all out of pocket. The projects have a minimum level of complexity, but can be as complicated beyond that as the team wants. Invariably many teams try to do something that is far too complicated for their skill set, and end up failing to complete the project. 

Anyway. For our project my team decided that we want to make a box. A box that dispenses paper. A paper dispensing box. yup. :D

Well that is probably being a little too turse. It is actually one of these(with modifications).

 

Anyway... this isn't so much about the actual project as how we are making it. 

We started with nothing 4 weeks ago and now we actually have quite a bit. We are going to be using an Atmel ATMega644PA microController, and a Telit GC864-Quad-V2 cellular module. This later thing brings us to our first awesome fun times. 

Here is what the cell module looks like

 

You may notice that connector on the side there... that is about 2 cm long... there are 40 pins. Those pins are exactly .5mm apart... i don't know if you have ever messed with .5 mm pins before... because it was for sure my first time having to do anything with them... and surface mount was the only way to go.  here is an early atempt at doing this... and honestly it was a good try.

Solder Bridges. many many solder bridges. by the way that breakout board is a story for another time, don't let me forget ya hear? anyway after a few attempts and actually getting it on once but then breaking it off because SOMEBODY wanted to connect the cell module on to test it, but it was too strong for the solder points and it ripped off the board...  we finnaly got it on, and then super glued it. 

isn't it beautiful. it almost brings a tear to my eye. 

if you didn't really follow what is going on here that is fine i guess... the moral is really: "if you are doing prototypes, pay a little extra and get something already with a breakout" 

for real. i think we would have saved 20$ in time and effort if we just would have went with a pre-brokenout cell module, but i didn't check the package completly and thought we could get a cable that attached, then we could break the cable out... but no, i was wrong... at least it all worked out, and we were actually able to solder it with no bridges, and all connected.