This week, I put together and wired up all the breakbeams onto the final board using extended male to female wires and nuts + bolts. I also implemented the game board audio using a DFAudio player and microSD card and wired up the GPIO extender board as well. In addition, I painted the scoreboard using spray paint. I also revised the code to refelect each of the tested components and made a pin-out for every component.
For the next week, I want to focus on system wide integration. I would like to be a bit more ahead on it as of now. I ordered the stickers and more paint to finish the surface completely, and am looking into possibly ordering a new servo to support different speeds.
During this project I mostly learned things that don’t really come up as much in class, like how to actually integrate a bunch of hardware together and deal with real-world issues. For example, working with the GPIO expander, handling multiple protocols at once (UART/I2C), and figuring out power/grounding problems were all new. I also got more comfortable debugging when things don’t work cleanly, like sensor noise or weird timing issues. I mainly learned by just testing things in small pieces first and then combining them, and using serial prints and basic tools to figure out what was going wrong. I also learned a lot about project planning and integration– especially when parts don’t work as expected or do not have well defined data sheets.