Electronics Workshop Lesson 1

Last Tuesday we had the first lesson of my electronics workshop we are having at Fablab Torino, thanks to the organization of OpenLab Torino and Fablab itself.

In the workshop we are designing LibreMote, an open hardware remote controller containing an accelerometer, 5 input buttons and a battery which communicates wirelessly via Bluetooth.

In the first lesson we prototyped LibreMote on a breadboard with its main components. The following picture shows the on-breadboard prototype.

I also quickly sketched the prototype on a more formal schematic, using KiCAD of course. Also available as PDF and KiCAD source.

The prototype has been demonstrated using a simple Arduino firmware, capable of reading the accelerometer and input buttons and stream them over bluetooth, and a Processing application which displayed the incoming data from bluetooth in a simple GUI as in the following screenshot.

In the next lessons, we'll convert this breadboard prototype into a complete schematic and then we'll design a PCB for it. Using KiCAD. Then we'll build it using DIY methods.. will be fun!

See you in the next lessons ;-)