Meet the Team!

Week 7 Updates: Electronics

           This past week a ton of advancements on our project were made, mostly dealing with software and the electrical design and construction:

Electrical Updates:

               This week our group finally got all of the electrical components that are going to be incorporated in the PipBoy circuit, and we also produced a rough schematic of how to build the Arduino circuit.

Figure 1. First design of the Arduino circuit

               There are a couple important things to note with the schematic; first being that the software used to design the schematic, Fritzing, didn't have a graphic for a 1200 mAh, 3.7 V lithium-polymer battery, so the one for the 1100 mAh was used instead since they have roughly the same physical size. Similarly, the pulse-rate sensor that we are incorporating in the final product is not the same model pictured in the schematic. However, both operate with the same basic principle of utilizing infrared and had the same connections to the Arduino with a power, ground, and signal pin.  Finally, the setup for the temperature sensor our team has is setup slightly different from the one pictured as well.  Both are the same model, but the manufacturer we obtained ours from set it up so that way all four pins are on the same side, rather than being divided onto either end.

             

             Other key features of the circuit include both the OLED display (furthest right component), and the temperature sensor, both require an I2C connection to the Arduino Nano.  This means that both have a SCL and a SDA pin; for the Arduino Nano, those are both the Analog A5 and the Analog A4 pins, respectively.  Unlike most of the other pins on the Nano, two devices can be connected to these pins, regarding they aren't the same component, since these pins create a bus channel allowing each module to have its own specific device ID.  Likewise, for the Bluetooth module, which is an HC-06, has pins for RX and TX.  These are connected to the Nano by the RX connecting to the TX pin and the TX pin on the HC-06 to the RX pin on the Nano.  When uploading Arduino sketches to the Nano, it is important that these two pin are left unconnected. Lastly, the pulse-sensor we are using has the option to read stimulus in either an analog or digital mode.  Our group found that the analog mode work better, and thus, is connected to the Nano at Analog pin A1.

             (Further update: our team realized that the original Nano board we order was a non-functioning Arduino clone, and so we will have to wait until Week 8 to check if the current Arduino sketch will work with the Nano.  A possible redesign might be necessary.)