Short update today.
This last week has been an immensely stressful one. A lot of things had suddenly and horribly gone wrong, but a combination of hard work and coffee have well and truly sorted them out. Embarrassingly, what appeared as the largest and most serious problem turned out to be a dead battery. After I’d finished banging my head against the wall, I set about completing the key matrix.
Having finished wiring up the buttons, I went about testing them. I was worried for a while as I was obtaining unreliable results when testing them individually, but once everything was plugged in at once, it turned out fine, which was a massive relief. Below are a few photos of the completed matrix.
The last update to make is in affixing the veroboard to the instrument. I tried glueing it down, but it wasn’t as robust as I hoped, so I’ve drilled a few holes and am going to try and attach them soon with more solid methods.
One of the most frustrating things to come out of this project is the sheer cost of replacing the components I keep accidentally destroying. I call this “The Graveyard of Dead Arduinos”.
I’m on my third Arduino now. Each one has been broken in different ways, all due to my own stupidity, such as pumping too much voltage into the Arduino or accidentally rerouting a high voltage to the wrong place. If I can say one thing to those reading this:
Be very careful where you stick things.
I guess you could apply that advice to more than just electronics, but that’s entirely up to you.
A R Turner 