Internship week 6

The sixth week of my internship here at NUS CUTE Center. Since the change of microcontroller board that i have mentioned last week, i have been busy downloading all the different libraries which is needed for the board and all the examples which will be needed for the sensors and screen to work. While downloading, i came across a website named codebender which is exactly like the Arduino IDE and it allows the user to program the microcontroller board however this website is unique such that the website downloads al the necessary drivers required for all the board that they support to work. They also support a wide variety of boards, from Arduino Uno and even the ATmega board. this greatly reduced the time which was required for me to download the installer and i was wondering why it took me so long to discover a website which was so useful. It also has its own existing library which contains the similar codes to the Arduino IDE. You may think i have to pay like a certain membership fee to be able to use this website however this website is also completely open source and free for all users, all you have to do is to have an account with them. 

I also began soldering the header pins to the controller board but due to my lousy soldering skills, i accidentally damaged the board which my supervisor provided for me. That resulted in me going down to the local Singapore distributor of the board, Sgbotics. They provide a wide variety of microcontrollers to students and professionals who requires such technology. They even provide 3D printing machines. My supervisors were very understanding and did not reprimand me for my costly errors and told me they would cover the cost and i would be able to reimburse the costs of the board. I then heaved a sigh of relief as i thought i would have to pay for it myself as i was the person who damaged it.

By Thursday, i got the screen working and all the other sensors working as this board is an easier board as it is a more similar board compared to the Arduino. i was able to find codes and examples online which aid me greatly in doing the programming. I started to think of applications for my screen and the first thing that came to mind would obviously be a clock as this basically is a wearable technology. i started thinking of a way to get the time of the day however without using a RTC, real time clock module which would use up more ports and increase the size of the watch. Thus i started research and found out that it was able to get a serial timing to the Arduino as long as you connect it to a computer and thus i was able to get a digital clock to show the time of the day. In the following days, i will use it to display on the LCD screen.

As i was going back to Singapore Polytechnic for napfa on Friday evening, that basically concludes my sixth week of internship here. Hope that everything will turn out fine and i would have something to handover by the end of my internship here.