Categories: all aviation Building a Biplane bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater
Fri, 18 Dec 2015
Back in March of this year, I started working on an idea I'd had: a very darkroom-specific timer. It needed to generate absolutely no light (eliminating anything that runs on a cellphone) so the film I was processing in open trays wouldn't be fogged. It needed to be easy to operate in the dark, ideally just a single button press. It needed to clearly indicate its status when running, ideally giving me reminders at reasonable intervals for things like agitation of the developing film.
Thus was born the Darktimer (page not quite ready for prime time as of this writing, but you get the idea). I wanted it to be a simple project, with minimal hardware requirements: an Arduino, an LCD, some buttons and a speaker. It should be written using test-driven development. It would ultimately be written up and shared as an open-source project in case anyone else wanted a slightly task-specific serial programmable timer.
I worked on the firmware off and on for the next ~8 months, making gradual progress on the feature set. I knew the hardware would be simple, and I was able to set up a cobbled-together prototype in late summer. I ordered parts to make the real thing as summer turned into fall, but theatrical committments took up all my free time for a few months.
Finally, this month, I started putting the pieces together. I got the smallest premade case I could find that would probably hold all the pieces, although it's gigantic and mostly contains air. I cut and drilled the case to fit the LCD and the various switches. Two nights ago, I had it working perfectly, and it only needed the Arduino Pro Mini to be affixed to its foam tape, and the speaker holes drilled, when I pressed a bit too hard on the board, the Pro Mini made a little click! noise and the screen started spewing garbage.
So last night I soldered in a new Pro Mini (I'd ordered 5, since they're useful, and at $5 apiece, they don't break the bank), and programmed it. Voila, functional Darktimer! I screwed down the case lid, and applied some slightly-askew labels to identify the buttons, along with a Dangerpants logo sticker.
Then I noticed it: a glowing, happy feeling. Unusual. Buoyant good mood. Oh right: I Finished a Thing.
I seem to have lots of ideas, and start on lots of projects, but it's remarkably rare that I actually take one of those projects all the way through to completion. Particularly not the ones that involve making a physical thing. Sufficiently rare that I had completely forgotten the pleasure that comes from forming this abstract idea I'd had months before into a real, functional device sitting in front of me, gently counting down the seconds based on a timer I programmed using the front-panel buttons. Just like a real consumer device. Weird.
It's not perfect: the upper three buttons are too close to the LCD window after I momentarily spaced that I was going to have an LCD window; the labels were affixed slightly askew; the speaker is very quiet with no volume control. I have three or four ideas for improvements that would make it more useful in the darkroom. But it works, and it does the job I set out to do, and it's finished.
It's a nice feeling, and one that I had forgotten. I finished a thing.
Posted at 12:12 permanent link category: /gadgets
Categories: all aviation Building a Biplane bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater