(no subject)
Tomorrow my senior project moves from the "design" phase to the "getting crap to work" phase. This is pretty scary, since I have no idea what I did right and what I did wrong with the design. This is my first RF design.
The circuit board is arriving tomorrow after a hell of a lot of hassle. My lab partner and I stayed at the lab until 4:45AM last Friday finishing the design, since we wanted to finally move past that. We did all the post-processing on Friday and sent it out after business hours, so we didn't hear anything until Monday, when I got an email casually informing me that the board would cost $400 unless I made it smaller, and that we'd have to make major design changes in several areas. I called the board manufacturer to discuss these comments with them, and they told me that the material I needed to use was out of stock and isn't even being made anymore! This could have really screwed us over. Miraculously, someone found a few pieces of it lying around, and that's how they were able to give me the quote in the first place. However, we'll never be able to reproduce the board without a major redesign. I feel stupid for choosing a material that's unavailable (...so that's why it was so cheap!). Anyway, we painfully worked around all the issues they raised, and resubmitted the board on Tuesday night. I'm pretty amazed that they already shipped it, and it will be at my door in a matter of hours, along with our last component order.
I won't be soldering on Satuday, though, since I'm taking the day off to go to the Boonville Beer Festival with Leif. I'm very excited about this event. I even figured out a way to get there and back without any driving: We'll take a bus to the Watsonville airport, and my dad will pick us up there and fly us to Boonville, which has an airport less than a mile from where the festival is taking place. This will also make it a much more reasonable day trip than it would be by car. It's nice when things work out like that.
I got my computer back up. I don't think I mentioned that a capacitor on the motherboard blew, and it took a week and a half to get a replacement board from ASUS. If I had known it would take so long, I would have just replaced the capacitor myself. I received the replacement yesterday, and installed it against my better judgement (I should have been studying for my 221 midterm instead). I figured it would only take half an hour, but I ran into all sorts of catastrophic problems, one after the other. Amazingly, I managed to get the system fully operational after a couple of hours.
I took said midterm today. I had been dreading it for awhile, since I knew there was no way I could do well on it given the trouble I have with the homework. It wasn't as hard as I was expecting, but that makes me all the more ashamed about how I fared. I think I would have been fine if I had about twice the allotted time. I'm taking the class pass/fail, so at least there's nothing at stake here beyond my pride.
The circuit board is arriving tomorrow after a hell of a lot of hassle. My lab partner and I stayed at the lab until 4:45AM last Friday finishing the design, since we wanted to finally move past that. We did all the post-processing on Friday and sent it out after business hours, so we didn't hear anything until Monday, when I got an email casually informing me that the board would cost $400 unless I made it smaller, and that we'd have to make major design changes in several areas. I called the board manufacturer to discuss these comments with them, and they told me that the material I needed to use was out of stock and isn't even being made anymore! This could have really screwed us over. Miraculously, someone found a few pieces of it lying around, and that's how they were able to give me the quote in the first place. However, we'll never be able to reproduce the board without a major redesign. I feel stupid for choosing a material that's unavailable (...so that's why it was so cheap!). Anyway, we painfully worked around all the issues they raised, and resubmitted the board on Tuesday night. I'm pretty amazed that they already shipped it, and it will be at my door in a matter of hours, along with our last component order.
I won't be soldering on Satuday, though, since I'm taking the day off to go to the Boonville Beer Festival with Leif. I'm very excited about this event. I even figured out a way to get there and back without any driving: We'll take a bus to the Watsonville airport, and my dad will pick us up there and fly us to Boonville, which has an airport less than a mile from where the festival is taking place. This will also make it a much more reasonable day trip than it would be by car. It's nice when things work out like that.
I got my computer back up. I don't think I mentioned that a capacitor on the motherboard blew, and it took a week and a half to get a replacement board from ASUS. If I had known it would take so long, I would have just replaced the capacitor myself. I received the replacement yesterday, and installed it against my better judgement (I should have been studying for my 221 midterm instead). I figured it would only take half an hour, but I ran into all sorts of catastrophic problems, one after the other. Amazingly, I managed to get the system fully operational after a couple of hours.
I took said midterm today. I had been dreading it for awhile, since I knew there was no way I could do well on it given the trouble I have with the homework. It wasn't as hard as I was expecting, but that makes me all the more ashamed about how I fared. I think I would have been fine if I had about twice the allotted time. I'm taking the class pass/fail, so at least there's nothing at stake here beyond my pride.