Matthew Shen’s Status Report for 4/3/22

This week was dedicated to PCB construction. Unfortunately, our progress was slowed since I ordered the wrong decoders for our PCB. However, with regards to what was successful, our PCB header pins line up perfectly, so when we solder them in, the frame should be perfectly rectangular. Additionally, when a test was run with the wrong decoders (active low instead of active high), the logic seemed correct in that all of the LEDs that were expected to be on were off and vice-versa. This suggests that once we receive the correct decoders, the particular frame we tested should work as expected. Another thing that went well was the soldering process in general. All of our components fit perfectly on their pads, and the stencil-oven combination has worked flawlessly. This coming week, we hope to get the new decoders on Monday so that we can get at least one pair of edges working for our demo on Wednesday. If that pair of edges functions appropriately, we may try to have the whole frame up and running by Wednesday. My task for this week will mainly be soldering and hardware debugging. We are still on schedule to finish in time.