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Delaynie’s Status Report for 2/21/2026

This week, I nearly completed the schematic.  I just have a few questions regarding exactly how the pins on the LCD screen work, and once those are answered, I will be ready for layout.

While I am waiting for some answers (determined experimentally) on how the LCD screen pins work, I found and verified component footprints.  This helps ensure that I don’t fall too far behind.  Once I am confident of pin connections, I can begin layout right away.  For this first spin of our PCB, layout and dimensions don’t need to be exact.  This board is going to be a proof-of-concept, and we will order a second board once we are confident in the functionality of this electrical design.

To mitigate risk in this electrical design, I added additional breakout header pins to every connection on the microcontroller.  Additionally, I put solder jumpers on all the connections to the auxiliary components.   Therefore, it is easy to change a connection or pinout if we need to, and this design can have multiple functions.

Next week, I need to have the PCB ready to order before spring break!

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Team Status Report for 2/21/2026

This week, our team spent most of the time preparing for the design review presentations.  In addition, we continued work on the firmware, software, and hardware.  We prototyped the screen interface, and after confirming the details of the hardware interface, the PCB’s schematic is complete.

Overall, this is a relatively low-risk project.  Currently, the most significant risks are that Bluetooth won’t transfer data fast enough, and that integrating all of our features will take longer than expected.  These risks will be managed by testing things in isolation and as soon as possible before integrating into the rest of the system.

One change from a prior hardware design is the decision to not rely on on-board or external flash, but rather to use a microSD card.  This, while less elegant, should be more robust and easier to use and debug since we will be able to directly read and write the data on the SD card.

There are no changes to our schedule, we could probably do with picking up the pace a bit, but I wouldn’t say we’re behind schedule.

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Delaynie’s Status Report for 2/14/2026

## Screen test with ESP32 Dev board

– Had trouble wiring the ESP32 to the display to use 8-bit protocol because [the guide from Adafruit](https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-2-4-color-tft-touchscreen-breakout/8-bit-wiring-and-test) had hardcoded the pinouts for an Arduino Uno, and the pinout wasn’t compatible 😡.

– Pivoted to finding another library: [TFT_eSPI Library](https://doc-tft-espi.readthedocs.io/starting/).

– Widely recommended for ESP32 and other microcontrollers, according to Google AI summary.

– Despite its name, it does support both SPI and 8-bit protocols for ESP32 and the ILI9341 display driver.

– Before getting started with 8-bit, I decided to make things even simpler and try to make it work with SPI first.

– After wiring up everything and flashing the example code, the screen was still blank white.

– Looking at the SPI guide from Adafruit, I realized I had to solder together 3 of the 4 jumpers on the back.

– After that, it worked.

– I hooked it up to a power supply. The whole system uses about 300 mW

  • Image of setup:

## Work on pcb schematic

– added battery charging circuitry

– added USB-C circuitry

– decided to put SD card slot

– current schematic:

Schedule

My progress is on schedule, and in order to keep it that way, I will finish the schematic by the middle of next week, and begin working on the layout.

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Delaynie’s Status Report for 2/7/2026

This week, I prepared for and presented the Project Proposal on Wednesday. Additionally, I worked with Italia to spec out some of the hardware, choosing which components are the best fit for our application, while taking into consideration cost, size, power consumption, and performance. Below is a screenshot of the bill of materials we are beginning to compile.

According to our Gantt chart, we are slightly ahead of schedule because none of our tasks start until next week. Therefore any work listed on the Gantt chart this week is considered ahead of schedule, for now. However, to make sure I stay on schedule, I need to be focused on Monday to finish specing parts and then move on to researching and prototyping firmware.

Deliverables due by the end of next week are deciding on all main components, as well as having the bulk of the research on which embedded software platform to use.