3/19/2026 - Made the schematic(mostly) and did some pcb stuf

Bleh

I am groot

and i am also making cool badges for horizons. why am i doing it here? cuz i have seen how previous badges have failed(undercity nearly not worky, parthy completely not worky) and now want to have an attempt where it is more okay to fail so i hopefully dont fail later.

anyways onto the main thingy majiggy

TLDR for this badge is that I want e ink on it cuz e ink is cool and awesome and amazing and fun and i cant think of more words to describe e ink but e ink cool.

Rn i am just gonna do some basic bullshitery and make basic e ink then i will think of more stuff to add later.

i am using an rp 2040 for it. why? cuz I have a very limited knowledge on microcontrollers and this is probably gonna be easy to use. and also kai used it for overglade badge and i am using that as a reference.

Anyways it has reset button and some beginning wiring thingies.

then added a fuckton of capacitors.

and then flash. I picked this one cuz kai picked this one for his overglade badges and I trust his judgement more than my ability to research and from what i have heard, this part is a big deal so kaboom its there.

found this thing online on how to wire a usbc plug.

then needed to do the actual e ink wiring. except kicad didnt have any symbols for the e ink i am using. (2.66 inch thingy from something i forgor will link it later, not bothered rn) but 24 pin thing and i just made my own symbol. so i pulled up the datasheet and made it

datasheet on how to wire it ^^^

how i wired it^^^ idk how it connects to the microcontoller yet but that is a problem for future me, not now me, so we chilling.

indicator light. i think this is how it works

made a footprint for a 2 pin smd button cuz it didnt exist on kicad. so kaboom it exists now.

made a rectangle and separated parts a bunch

kablewey. routed some stuff but the sheer amount of ratlines and tiny parts is killing me. this is end of day one. i did this yesterday but shush. this thingy doesnt let me journal for things i did yesterday so you dont get to complain. will hopefully get more done soon and get it ordered to test

3/20/2026 - routed pcb + did some art ish

today i woke up and went to school. i had a double free period in the morning so i worked on this during then for an hour. after that i was rudely disturbed by a jay and did stasis stuff for a bit.

first thing i did was make this footprint. for the e ink thingy to clip onto. its cool. except i wasnt 100% sure on whether it would work. so i consulted my personal channel and was informed about a terminal command that converts lcsc-easyeda footprints into kicad footprints.

so i used that instead. all my time spent went to waste but meh.

thingy doneish

it exists now at least

capacitors(something is wrong here, except i dont realise until later)

flash routed

after this i did the unthinkable, I consulted the blueprint guide and yoinked the parted that I needed from it. for the inductor on the e ink i just copy pasted the part number from the datasheet and scrolled lcsc until i got a specificatiosn match. so if it blows up then we blame jay

Routed stuff

amongus vias are real

What the board looks like.

I put this into jlc and realised that i used 01005 footprints for my caps and resistors instead of 0402 footprints. so thats really cooked. i had to go back through and fix them all. thankfully it didnt take too long since everything is already super spaced out.

here is what it looks like with fixed positions and footprints but without routing. the ratlines on all the vias look really cool.

thingy done(again)

I added my logo to the back and also a lanyard hole at the top. and now i am pooped for today so kablewey we go bye bye until tomorrow.