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Wearable Prototype Schematics and Simplifying the Hardware Design

A project log for EmotiGlass

A new device to change the user's emotional perception of reality.

jason-meyersJason Meyers 08/27/2018 at 06:180 Comments

The schematics for the wearable prototype have been uploaded, with each sheet corresponding to a small PCB with a portion of the EmotiGlass circuitry.  Sheet 1 shows the right side PCB, which makes the connections between the Feather and the rest of the system.  Sheets 2 and 3 are the front PCBs, which mount to the front LCD displays.  They contain the support components necessary for the LCD Displays, connections for the side LCD shutters, and connections to other parts of the system.  Sheet 4 shows the development PCB, which contains the control pots and hardware PWM circuitry.  This board will be mounted on top of the feather, which is mounted on top of the right side PCB.

Currently, the side LCD shutters are driven by a dedicated hardware PWM circuit.  DC will degrade the shutters over time, so they must be driven by a circuit with no net DC.  A standard PWM peripheral is not able to do this, but it appears that the TCC modules (Timer/Counter for Control) in the Atmel SAMD21 processors (the ARM Cortex M0+ based microcontroller used by this feather) will be able to generate balanced PWM drive signals with no external circuitry.  The firmware module for this will be written while we are waiting for PCBs to be manufactured. 

The control pots are present primarily for convenience during prototyping.  As development advances, their function will be replaced eventually by software.  For this reason, the pots and the hardware PWM circuitry have been placed on a separate board.  This board can be installed for initial work with the wearable prototype, and then removed once the firmware and software have advanced sufficiently.

The completed wearable prototype schematics allow work on the PCB layouts to proceed together with the mechanical design of the frame, which is currently partially complete.

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