Notes on measuring things
Good solder joints are shiny, smooth and a little unexciting. The board worked on the second revision, after one very self-evident fix. The enclosure took longer than the electronics, as usual. I am still not sure I have it right, but it is closer.
The short version
It took me eight attempts to see the pattern. The first three weeks were mostly about unlearning. Repairing things teaches more than building them from scratch. Low-power design is mostly about what the device does not do. I attempted the tiny version first. It did not last.
There is a version of this that is much more complicated. This is not that version. I would rather do one thing deliberately than five things quickly. I keep a short list of things to try next; measuring things is near the top. None of this is new, and that is partly why it works.
This got going as a quick note and slowly turned into something longer.
What I kept
A friend once described enclosures as hushed work, and the phrase stuck. It took me four attempts to see the pattern. If you only take one thing from this, make it the part about sensors.
Nothing here requires a multimeter, though it does make things easier. I altered my mind about keyboards twice while writing this. I altered my mind about power supplies twice while writing this. A hot air station helps, but it is not the point. An oscilloscope helps, but it is not the point.
- Leave room for quiet mistakes
- Start with old radios and nothing else
- Note the date and the weather
- Start with sensors and nothing else
Where it started
Every autumn I revisit the same questions about weather stations. There is no single right way to approach designing a board, but some ways are kinder than others. Most of what I know about soldering came from getting it wrong first. It is not glamorous, but it holds up.
Half of the work is deciding what to leave out. Looking back, the hushed approach was the right call. I like old radios that shows the marks of how it was made.
Getting started
The best advice I got was just to slow down. Every autumn I revisit the same questions about old radios. Nothing here requires a hot air station, though it does make things easier.
I keep coming back to keyboards, mostly because it rewards time. What surprised me most was how little equipment it needed.