Halo Cortana Data Chip

[ChefBenni]

Hey guys
after 8 hours of working on the PCB, I'm finally finished and now it's ready to produce!



Battery is also ordered and should arrive this week
I'm kinda excited to see this thing finished!

 

[thatdecade]

Love it! Much cleaner than the previous traces.

 

[jlhR2]

Very nice indeed, I love how your cortana is turning out so far.

~James 'S' (Dustin, thatDecade's partner in design).

 

[ChefBenni]

Today a little update:
The battery came today and it's fits like it should in the width and hight. But the length is a different problem. It's about 1-2mm to long.




I think I could cut some of the unnecessary housing on the battery away, then it should fit nicely.

 

[thatdecade]

Awe, the lil' battery is so cute!

lol, but seriously, looks amazing, keep it up~!

 

[ChefBenni]

The best thing about the battery was the package! You know what I mean

 

[Stiilus]

there is just so much wrong with the size of that postal wrapping that words fail me...

otherwise, this is gonna look amazing, i can't believe the level of detail you're going to on this. just amazing...

 

[thatdecade]

Large enough for the caution sticker.

 

[ChefBenni]

Hey guys,
after hours of staring at the schematics I found a big mistake! The charge current should not be higher then 10mA (10mA battery) but the current needed to run the lights are between 20-40mA. So while connected to usb the battery gets empty and can't be charged. Now I have to put in a USB charger and supply changer, which runs the chip on USB power while connected.

 

[thatdecade]

So your fix then bypasses the regulator? Sending USB power to the charging circuit, and the attiny controller. In attempt to isolate the battery charging from the drain of the rest of the circuit.

Is there any issue that may lead to the back current traveling through the voltage regulator? Check the data sheet, may need to add a diode to prevent this.

 

[ChefBenni]

That's a common problem on mobile devices out there so I just change the voltage regulator to a little bit bigger one which can decide which power source should power the circuit. But I got again the problem with the layout, so this could take some time.

 

[Stiilus]

lucky you caught it now... i usually have the bad luck/misfortune of assembling something and then finding out it has a fault in it... i can't wait to see the finished project, it's going to be amazing...

 

[Redshirt]

Awesome work on a prop that's critical to the story line, yet you don't see it getting a lot of attention. What battery did you use? Looks like one I once used to repair a 1st gen iPod Shuffle that Junior put through the wash. You could probably hide one of those early Shuffles in your shell as an alternative to an SD card. Beautiful project all around.

Redshirt

 

[Noskey]

Sadly, I don't have anything to contribute, but this prop is looking really incredible. I love seeing others put so much effort into their work. It's really quite inspirational actually. Keep up the awesome work

 

[purpuk]

Wow! ! This is outstanding !! I like how you've layed it all out too. Have you finished it yet ? There's a mini pc called a "Rasberry Pi" that runs linux and its about the size of a credit card. I don't know if it can be done but i thought you'de be years ahead if you could use your Cortana chip with something like that in your gear.

 

[Largo Usagi]

Wow! ! This is outstanding !! I like how you've layed it all out too. Have you finished it yet ? There's a mini pc called a "Rasberry Pi" that runs linux and its about the size of a credit card. I don't know if it can be done but i thought you'de be years ahead if you could use your Cortana chip with something like that in your gear.

I was actually talking to a friend about using a raspberry pi in my suite, and having an SD slot in the helmet for the r pi. This just takes it to the next level, I cant wait to see where this goes.

 

[ChefBenni]

Hi guys, long time no see. I just had the busiest semester of my life, 9 classes
So now here is some progress:

The PCB in the 3D printed housing:



Compared to my thumb



here with the battery in it:



and now some checking if everything got the same layout.

Looks good to me now I just need to solder the parts on it.


And now some size comparison with my finger and the microcontroller:



and one of the tiny MOSFET:


And, what do you think? If I got time next week I'll try to solder it and put a program on the microcontroller.

 

[drew159]

That's some truly awesome work!

 

[thatdecade]

Glad to see you return! Love the PCB and parts.

How do you intend to solder those? The hidden pads, hmm... oven?

 

[ChefBenni]

Hi guys,

I had some serious problems with the ATiny40 µController and soldering on the LEDs. So I decided to redo the PCB with 90° angle SMD LEDs and the ATiny4313. It was not easy, but I managed it, after over 10 hours of routing. Here's a picture of the Eagle file:



And here the backside:


And the more than overfilled frontside:


The new PCB is already ordered and should arrive next week :cool
I'll post some pics of the PCB, when it's here.

@thatdecade: yep, I've build myself a little reflow oven. The stencil for the PCB is already cut

Ben