DAY 12 GOOD NEWS

Remember when I said I wanted toi make a 6-7 joke? yeah both pcb and parts are coming in about 3 - 5 days BUT I'll say as a precaution 6-7 days :skull: lol anyways

I'm bored sooo yeah cool! Also Out of context [I believe everyhting I said these logs was out of context lol] but I made a custom t shirt for secret santa with the 6-7 joke for a friend loool funny I can only show the back as the front has political figures and I do not wish to make jokes with that. I do not believe in any party or leader.

Sup guys DAY 11

The 3D print arrived Yipiie!!!!!

The pcb should arive in 10 - 12 days hope I can make a 6-7 fays joke lol.

The parts are in transit or sumtin like that.

DAY 6 Stuff idk lol

Yooooo guess what JLC denied the first PCB bcs no drl files but now it's in prod!!!!

This will be fire ngl. The 3D guy from Romania said it should be done by Monday and I should get it on tuesday yey!! What's more 2 of my friends want get a macro pad as well so might as well buy other parts for the macro pad Yippie!!!

Uhhhh Also got a confirmation email for the other stuff, by other stuff I mean Kit and maybe solder? Who knows lmao! But yeah GGs it's a waiting game and I hate waiting & long games ;-;

DAY 5 Bought 3D + PCB

Sooo today I Started my spending spree =D!
I first bought the PCB from JLCPCB. Guess what it was 4.8$ + a tax of 1.01$ Idk if this makes a change but in my bom I said it was 4.80 BUT hopefully it won't be a problem!
I found a cool guy from Romania to lend a help to print the 3D case from the #printer legion thing on slack!!! I'll have the bottomcase black and the top will be transparent!
The shipping bee is like 8.99 - 9.99 lei which converts to about 2.05 - 2.28$ with SameDay (Sadly it's name is kind of a satire as it delivers the next day Lmfaooooo)!

But yeah nice experience

Note: Jay said the Components and Solder money/pack will be sent withing 2 weeks HOPEFULLY everything arrive here before 17th of December as I have to leave town for 2 weeks ;-;. But whatever!!!

DAY 4 I think it is now

I'm just waiting on the grant and I can't wait for the nice experience to assemble everything ^-^. Also hope everyone is doing well!

My next project until 1st of january would be to start on a GeeksCube Hologram like Custom PCB.
I already have started and it's going well!!!

ElurePad | Kind of My first encounters with PCBs

How I Begun

I've actually taken a challenge from a friend to try to start my PCB Journey. It started with him showing me an instagram reel. Now I'm here with a PCB Made and stuff (:.

What I've Learned

All in all it took me about 3 days and about 6 - 8 hours of research, work & Designing. This has showed me that I can pick up skills that I thought of as impossible till now. But NGL I HATE Fusion360 it's not as intuitive as I thought AutoDesk products to be ;-;.

Day 0

It started with me making research on how these work. MOST INSPIRATION I have taken was from PROTADESIGNS
Really love their Custom Built 3x3 Macro pad <3.

DAY 1

Started at 8.30PM Romania Time. Documented myself on the parts and a bit of how PCBs work as it's my first time and started from the past designs and templates
that are offered. I started to understand and observe a obvious pattern in the designs and how they are wired in the schematic. It took me 2 - 2.30 hours to at least try to design and understand how to create a good version. I first wanted to add 2 rotary encoders and a screen and a 3x3 switch matrix BUT I had no space for pins tried to add a GPI0 hub but it was to hard and I started to downgrade. Offtopic but I just found one of my old childhood songs from SU***DE SQUAD Sucker for Pain it's keeping me sane through the process of trial and error. I got ambitioned by PROTADESIGNS to start smth small and not go all in. So I decided to go with a 3x3 matrix meaning 9 switches an oled screen and another switch next to the display to loop through 4 macro saves a save contains 9 macros meaning about 36 in total idea also taken from PROTADESIGNS. NOTE: It's not an original work but I am having fun creating and understanding along the way.

SANE NOTE: I researched so much like more than any Class in High School and used like 30% AI to understand how to make pieces go together It's honestly exhausting but I see the reward in the long run. It being the Lessons, Skills & Maybe a Kit to kick start this hobby (:

SUB NOTE as of 11:39 PM I have finished the Schematics:

DAY 2

As of 11:49 I started the actual PCB (Super Note: I am working on the orpheuspad not a clean template as I said I am trying to understand how things go together. BUT I am not copying the design I will just replace the parts they have with my own vision meaning the design won't be the same in any way)

Idea oh how to make it look:

DAY 3

Now that I look back on the day's 2 design of the pcb it kinda looks like a phone ((: But I think I'll try to make it as compact as i can as I do not wish to have it take this much space and it looks bad lol.

Started on the actual design of the pcb at 10:25 PM trying my best to wire and understand how this actually works (:
Hard but doable

I'm hitting a roadblock in the orpheuspad template they use a WASD layout and i'm using a 3x3 layout and now I'm asking myself HOW TO MAKE IT SMALL as I have the board and the 3x3 diodes then I have the OLED I have to make it look bulkier then it needs to be, OR I can just rotate the XIAO on the back and have the resistors like on the back side while having the switches and oleds on the front NVM won't work as we still have the holes. I can use a SMD but it's not advised for beginners well it's a first project Afterall It doesn't have to look great. I took breaks between 10.25 and 12:10 but I have finished the layout and have all the stuff on the board! Now I need to wire them. It took about 1 hour for this to be completed.

I will go ahead in 3 hours at about 4 PM I will start wiring and then on Day 3 I will build the 3d case and then will try to create a cool little app in python to make the macro thing work!

TIME:

As i started to work again I wired everything and then decided to take measurements AND I HAVE JUST NOW SAW that the board has to be 100x100 mm or less mine was 120 x 97mm sooooo I have to remake the wires and the pcb design ;-; sucks to not read lol.

Done it is now 100x95.250 mm Yey

Well I started on doing the routing at 6:00.
Note: 6.30 now I'm playing like a game of cutting out and it's getting on my nerves. It's really annoying always a wire is there and now it won't go good and have to redo the wires.

Note: 6:50 I'm done I did smth and It looks good.

Yeah I kinda rotated them a bit and put them like which one was with which seems like I was stupid lol!!

MORE SCREWS!!!

Also cool note: I just found out that Imogen Heap was feat. in I'm God I thought the voices were the same but whatever it's even cooler now that I did all this stuff and it's nice!!
also the timer for the wiring:

All right Now I have to just create the 3d housing!

It's now 19:31 and starting to create the 3d model!

its like 21:00 rn I finished doing the assembly on the pcb In Fusion and did the case thingy like 40% done

Alright I have done the 3d stuff! The Top part I will manually cut it after print as I'm not going to risk it not fitting.

Single only thing now is to create a simple firmware for starters and that's kind of it!

I'm now doing the firmware using KMK. NOTE It took me 30 mins. DK if it's good but i can reprogram if I get the kit.

Music I used as a Motivation

• Nirvana - Smells like teen spirit
• Michael Jackson - Remember The Time
• Ezekiel - Help_Urself
• L, W, I D - Sucker for Pain