Download EE 477 Final Report

ECE 477 Final Report
Spring 2010
Appendix A: Individual Contributions
A.1 Contributions of Andrew Gregor:
Having had more hands-on and construction and fabrication experience, Andrew was
tasked with the construction and packaging of GloveFX. He did most of the principal component
soldering and did any other soldering jobs needed for development and testing. Fly-wiring was
also his responsibility. Several components malfunctioned and needed to be either repaired or
replaced (e.g., the SHARC DSP, an ATmega328 microcontroller, the flash chip, and several
regulators). Near the end of the project, the XBee headers on the gloves failed to make contact
and had to be bypassed with fly-wiring. Some mistakes were also made during design that had to
be accounted for. A power rail in the hub was not connected to all of the necessary points and
had to be routed by wire, and a bad component decal required an off-PCB connection for a DIP
inverter.
Andrew attached all of the headers and interfacing components to the PCBs. Many of the
IO pins for the microcontrollers were pulled to headers that needed to be attached, and external
components had to be connected. The batteries and sensors were wired to their individual
headers; and power jacks, switches, and user interface components (keypad, rotary switch, LCD)
were attached. Heat shrink tubing proved invaluable in these endeavors as electrical tape could
never have been applied with as much grace – especially in tight header areas.
For the packaging, Andrew had to make sure that everything would fit properly. The
glove boxes were quite small, but everything managed to fit. The hub had quite a bit of room to
work with, and it didn’t get too cramped in there. Sensors and pushbuttons had to be sewn into
the gloves. This involved separating the glove lining from its shell and adding these components
in between. Once these were in place, the lining had to be carefully replaced, and the gloves were
sewn back together. Velcro was added to the top of the gloves and the bottom of their boxes to
allow for the attachment of the two, and they were connected together with a bundle of wires.
The hub required drilling and cutting to affix the external components. Andrew passed the
keypad ribbon cable through a slot in the shell and firmly attached the rotary switch with a nut
and locking washer. He cut a notch for the power jack and a slot for the SD card. A hole was also
necessary for the headphone jack.
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