Over the past couple of weeks, I have focused on finalizing and ordering the PCB. A lot of the PCB work involved designing a way to connect all of our PCBs electrically and mechanically. We intend to kill two birds with one stone by using through-hole connector pins to act as a way to fasten the boards together, while also passing signals from the Arduino along to the top and left edges. Since we have at most 2 tries getting the PCBs right, I spent a significant deal of time verifying the dimensions of these so that we should only have to worry about electrical problems if another iteration is necessary. We are still awaiting the board, but I also have yet to place an order for the through-hole components.
I also purchased solder paste as we have updated our PCB assembly plan to use a PCB stencil and oven to place our components onto the board. I feel like we are on schedule, although the PCB’s arrival will dictate our schedule going forward.