Gems of Wisdom
After completing our project, our team has compiled the following "Gems of Wisdom for future generations of 218ers":
- Start testing with your power supply early so that you’re sure that you’re not drawing too much current. Don’t make the switch from the benchtop supply to the other supply at the last minute
- Unless the power supplies got changed, be aware that the power supplies provided are much noisier than the benchtop supplies--filter capacitors are your friend. Lots and lots of filter capacitors.
- Have a clear and up-to-date list of tasks for every few days to keep everyone on track and to make sure that you’ll finish on time
- Stay on track with the list of tasks you set out for yourself
- Simplify your design from the start
- Finish your tasks sooner than they’re due so you leave yourself enough time to debug
- Meet the requirements of the project first before adding embellishments
- Choose one element of your project to go above and beyond on- make it a point of pride
- Think about wiring before you realize you need to solder to 84 LEDs…
- Design your machine so that the circuits are easily accessible
- Create a prototype of your machine before building everything.. It’ll save you from saying “In hindsight, we could have done this better” too many times
- We recommend soldering header pins verses crimping molexes - especially when it comes to LEDs. Molexes don't hold well in the provided breadboards, and take up a lot of space on the board, so individual header pins can be advantageous. While it does take some time to solder/heat shrink, it doesn't take much more time than molexing (at least given our soldering speed, to each his own!). We also hot glued all our header pins into our breadboards once we we sure we had wiring working to ensure no lose pins.