Gems of wisdom |
Circuits
- If you are using multiple Servos and LEDs, make sure you put 220 uF bypass capacitors across the power and ground rail of your power supply to avoid noise.
- Flatten all resistor, capacitors and jumper wires on the breadboards to avoid shorts due to touching leads.
- Label every wire closer to the end that plugs into the breadboard to avoid manual tracing of wires for debugging.
- A hand drill is the best way to braid wires and saves a lot of time rather than doing it manually.
- DO NOT FORGET to connect you TIVA ground to your power supply ground and make sure that it is connected at only one spot.
Software
- Make sure you have airtight state diagrams before writing any code. This will make you task exponentially easier. While making any changes further on, be sure to edit the state diagram first.
- Have a consistent variable style to avoid confusion when multiple team members are programming.
Mechanical Design and Manufacturing
- Get the mechanical design of the enclosure sorted out early. The Product Realisation Lab (PRL) gets very busy during the end of the project.
- Laser cut Duron wood is a quick and cheap way to manufacture the enclosure.
- Hot glue works wonders for fastening of components and is cheap and readily available on campus. It can also be used to link Duron together.
- Make sure to insert an easy grip or handles into your design since you are going to be moving the game around a lot.