George Gueorguiev // Engineering Journal

Other journals: Ben | Steve | Scott

[ Week 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 ]

Date of Work (2007) Time Spent Description
Week 1
  • January 8
2 hours
 Selected & organized group, decided on name "insomnia design."

Declared project name as "Prism."

Began initial research on which parts would be necessary.
  • January 10
1 hour
 Decided on Atmega16, MAX7313 LED drivers, and tricolor LEDs, other parts, etc.
  • January 12
1.5 hours
 Meeting with Paul Godin. Decided against tricolor LEDs, better understanding of complexity.
Week 2
  • January 15
2 hours
 Completed rough initial draft of website design and layout, handed to Ben.

After meeting with Paul Godin, decided against tri-color LEDs. Will use standard LEDs of different colors.
  • January 16
1 hour
 Ordered MAX7313 freebies.

Went to Active Electronics to understand pricing and availabilty of LEDs, as well as connectors, etc.
  • January 17
3 hours
Ordered free samples of MAX7313s from Maxim, encouraged group members to do likewise, saving money.

Experimented with various methods of parallel and serial port programming.

Began writing simple serial port tester in VB2005, dubbed "Cereal."

Researched sample source code of other projects utilizing serial port interfacing.
Week 3
  • January 23
1 hour
 Finished initial draft of project proposal.
  • January 23
1 hour
 Ordered 3 Atmega16s, decided on ordering from Digi-Key.

Ordered free samples of various microprocessors and LED drivers from TI.com.
  • January 24
3 hours
 Began writing Windows software for interfacing with the Prism.

Worked on improving website, added a CSS menu, change logo color, etc.

After doing more communication with Atmega16 users, decided to focus on serial port interfacing.
Week 4
  • January 29
5 hours
 Completed good initial draft of website layout and organization, handed to Ben.

Began researching STK500 (ATmega16 starter kit), read sample AVR source code.

Borrowed STK500 from Dylan, decided upon necessary resistor packs and capacitors.
  • January 31
4 hours
 Discovered operation of nice 12/5V switching power supply, ready to be used in project.

Began working on new layout and design for all future PowerPoint presentations, to match with website style.
Week 5
  • February 5
2 hours
 Decided on spacing and orientation of LEDs, made a little sample by poking LEDs through a sheet of paper.

Did more research on MAX7313 and ATmega programming.
  • February 7
4 hours
 Researched MAX7313 operation.

Assisted other group members in their work, checked up on progress.

Received shipment of headers, resistor packs.
  • February 8
1 hour
 Atmel programming tutorial with Craig.

Almost ready for LED PCB board fabrication...
Week 6
  • February 12
3 hours
 Researched I2C operation.
  • February 14
4 hours
 Researched I2C operation.

Finalized decision on wiring of LED board, made it ready for fabrication.

Most of wiring of microprocessor board has been decided.

Recorded videos to add to website.
Week 7
  • February 20
1 hour
 Discovered flaw in PCB design involving wrong polarity of LEDs, due to misunderstanding.

The MAX7313 driver ports are current sinkers, meaning they do not source LEDs.
  • February 21
4 hours
 Tested current draw and voltage requirements of all LEDs.

Although our LEDs have internal self-current limiting to prevent burning out, when they are pushed to ~5V or higher they tend to heat up and draw unnecessary amounts of current with no advantage.

Using resistor packs on microprocessor board solves this problem and removes heat.

Decided not to use white LEDs: too much current draw, poor performance at low voltages.

Designed small PCB to enable us to essentially enlarge 24-pin QSOP packages, for testing of MAX7313 operation.

Because of increased knowledge on I2C operation using the ATmega16, seems like we should be able to start writing real code soon.
Week 8
  • February 26
2 hours
 Tested serial interfacing using 2 serial port pin-out-boxes and a crossover cable.
  • February 28
4 hours
 Continued testing serial interfacing.

Researched I2C operation, serial programming.
  • March 1
1.5 hours
Read through website's code, cleaned it up, made sure it was standards compliant and validated every page.
Week 9
  • March 5
2 hours
 Researched MAX232 operation.
  • March 7
5 hours
 Recieved our PCB for the LEDs, and began soldering SMT tester PCB.

Had Progress Meeting 2 with Dylan.

Continued research on interfacing with serial port.
Week 10
  • March 12
2 hours
 Read AVR code, tried to further understanding.

Researched USART operation and coding.
  • March 14
4 hours
 Miscellaneous tasks, checking to see if we are on track, smoothing out PCB design problems.
  • March 15
2 hours
 Reviewed VB code.
Week 11
  • March 19
2 hours
 Soldered fix for DIP40 socket.

Miscellaneous cleanup tasks.
  • March 21
4 hours
 Assisted in soldering.

Read through more AVR code.
Week 12
  • March 26
2 hours
 Prepared Progress Meeting 3.

Participated in Progress meeting 3 with Dylan.

Assisted in completion of soldering 2nd PCB.
  • March 28
4 hours
 Assisted in finishing soldering.

Programmed ATmega16, and started up the Prism for the first time! It didn't work... Began troubleshooting.
  • March 30
2 hours
 Continued troubleshooting...
Week 13
  • April 2
2 hours
 Continued troubleshooting...
  • April 4
4 hours
 Continued troubleshooting...Contacted Craig Limber for assistance.
  • April 6
2 hours
 Continued troubleshooting...
Week 14
  • April 9
2 hours
 Continued troubleshooting...
  • April 11
3 hours
 Technical presentation and preparation.
  • April 13
2 hours
 Continued troubleshooting...
Week 15
  • April 16
2 hours
 Worked on final presentation (PowerPoint, agenda, etc...)
  • April 17
2 hours
 Continued work on final presentation.

Worked on website.
  • April 19
1 hour
 Final presentation (Business).