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- Category: 2022 system (v2)
As has been mentioned on several other articles, the Inter-Integrated Chip (I2C) protocol is very popular in Electronic systems, since its a very simple bus that only needs two pins and two pull-up resistors to implement, a clock and a data pin, yet it allows two way data transfer, under the control of the bus master device, which is generally the main system controller. It is a multi-device bus, with each device having a unique address, which is defined by the device family and generally a couple of pins on the chip that allow you to address more than one of the same on the bus.
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- Category: 2022 system (v2)
The ported code from the version 1 project, along with all the modifications to the development environment, removal of no longer needed functionality, new pin configuration, new chips and revised functionality is now compiling and linking, so it can be uploaded to the board to make it work and allow more exercising of the hardware. Much of the firmware to drive new or improved components is still not there though, there is no GPS module integration as that needs a UART driver to be written, no front panel control, no power module control, just the core, as the aim is Minimal Viable Product (MVP) to allow installation, since code improvements and enhanced functionality will take much longer to achieve.
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- Category: 2022 system (v2)
After the initial power-up, which checked the basics, such as the power rails being operational across the board with no obvious faults (i.e. nothing taking a lot of current) and the reset circuits operating correctly, the next step is to exercise each of the components on the board, to gain confidence that each of them are working as expected.
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- Category: 2022 system (v2)
Any development project is going to hit bumps in the road as it progresses, there are going to be all sorts of things that need consideration and prioritisation when working on such a project, just as you do in any corporate change programme. The various types of change this project is going to encounter will include:
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- Category: 2022 system (v2)
With any new board, you have to apply power to it at some point, so after removing all the modules (ESP32, Pi Zero, GPS, etc), since they are expensive to replace if things go wrong. I temporarily removed some current sensing resistors (bottom of the board, R115, R115, R117), as this allowed me to isolate sections of the board to limit damage if things went wrong.