Just about ready

I price-optimized the cart a bit and removed around $22 of unnecessary costs. I have now fully updated the git repository with a wonderful read me and I think I only need cart screenshots to submit now?

BOM, time to upload to git?

Last night, I spent my time finding all my parts on LCSC by having one spreadsheet with all the parts that were on the PCB and another with all the parts I needed to find LCSC part numbers for. After finding and matching all the LCSC part numbers to the parts I was using, I then uploaded it to LCSC and now need to download that cart from LCSC, after price optimizing, and then finally upload to GitHub. After organizing Git, I can then VibeCode something? and then submit. I also started following the Squeak tutorial because I need a wireless mouse so that I can CAD more easily. (This is my first PCB without a tutorial, btw, so I bet there is something wrong with it that I don't understand)

Cad, Case, and how do I code

Since my last post, I have had the amazing opportunity to participate in PROTOTYPE, experience so many new and creative ideas, and meet some awesome people. But other than participating in an in-person hackathon, I was able to make a case for the MP2 player, it started as an outline of the PCB and seeing where and much certain components would stick out.

PCB & CASE

After some quick initial design work, I asked a friend to print a test case, and both the top & bottom fit quite nicely, but the case door and hinge needed more space, which I plan for the final design

PCB in CAD

And after experiencing some soldering experience in my hackpad project think I'll need a stencil for this one. The shape of the case was aimed to be as small as possible while leaving as little of the PCB exposed as possible. I will try to finish the BOM and submit it in time before Christmas festivities start for me.

Finished Routing!

I had to restart halfway through once after I realized I spent a while on a config that wouldn't allow me to connect everything, but after that hiccup, I was able to route everything without any DRC errors, and I got a majority of the warnings to go away. I'm going to add my name and date, and something else to the silk screen, and start working on a case in Onshape. I'm very happy at the moment with how it's turning out and can't wait to finish this project up. I also have to start thinking about how I'm going to code this (I'm pretty bad at programming). I'll ask a friend to recommend how I should approach this, and hopefully I can have something presentable and somewhat workable.

Schematic Done I Think

Just finished my schematic and added the following buttons:
Power On/Off
Up
Down
Left
Right
Vol+
Vol-
Back

Now I will begin working on placing the footprints, making traces, and all the other PCB stuff lol. I want to keep it pocket-sized sized so I might put electronics on both sides, but I don't know yet

Just Buttons Left

So far, everything but the buttons has been implemented in the schematic, I think. I might look into a volume wheel for the project, but I don't think it is necessary; it would be cool. The buttons that I am currently thinking of adding are:
Power on/off
Select (pause/play)
Up
Down
Left
Right
Volume Up/Down
Back/undo

Anything more than this shouldn't be required, I think, and I'll probably ask someone to double-check me later as well. I've also decided, since my last journal, not to add Bluetooth to the project because I want to see how simple I can keep this project.

Some More Schematic

With midterms coming up, I haven't gotten to work on any of my projects as much, but I started wiring the SD-card reader to the STM32 and have almost completed the power regulator, I think. tonight I want to finish the schematic in a place where tomorrow I can possibly start working on aligning the footprints and see what layouts might work. One issue I can see in the future is me disliking the OLED screen, but I don't really feel like changing it because it also looks aesthetic. From the other open source MP3 players I've seen, some have haptic feedback, which is cool, but I feel that's out of my skill range at this current moment in time. I'll also want to add Bluetooth to this project, I think, maybe. I also need to update my BOM after this journal.

Mo' Research

I honestly didn't work as much on the PCB, but more on getting some plugins working and finding out how to use Kicad themes(I love dark mode). I did do more research on what I would need and added some new parts(like a voltage regulator, OLED screen, buttons, and SD card reader). They're not on the BOM yet, but I plan to do a full list again after I'm done with my schematic. What I did do is wire the MP3 decoder to a headphone amplifier and then the headphone amplifier to the audio jack, I think. What I do next is probably double-check that I did everything right in this part of the schematic, and then move on to the voltage regulator and everything else after that can be more or less done at the same time, I think.

Began on schematic

I'm probably going to work on it a bit more today. I started on a schematic and a parts list today, and I think it's going well so far. I don't exactly need/want this to be too complicated, hopefully. This project aims to familiarize me with STM32 chips and circuit boards in general, as I've only followed tutorials so far. I'm going to try and make something outside of my comfort zone with this, and after this project, I will finally restart the circuit board for my robot arm and finish that project before working on anything else. One More thing I also hope to accomplish in this project is learning how to package a compact-ish circuit board. The final goal of this project is just allowing me to listen to ad-free music whenever I want :)

this is the current list of parts

STM32F401VEH6
XUNPU TS-1003-10026
HS HS91L02W2C01
Legion MFR01-A1F03L1S-B
TI TPA6132A2RTER
VLSI VS1063A-L
(More to come!)