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First Prototype Failure

A project log for Accel-Lights for Inline

Reactive RGB LED lights for Inline Skates

mM 03/30/2026 at 06:190 Comments

Had some interesting twists and turns with this first prototype.

First mistake was a result of my trying to save some money on tariffs. Wanting to take advantage of my proximity to a border with another country, I had the boards shipped to a friends address across the border. This resulted in some issues with the last mile shipping company having some issues locating the address and it going back and forth in their system, which resulted in me waiting about an additional month to receive the boards.

My next problem was a result of me probably connecting something incorrectly to the usb bridge in the schematic, so the board would get power when connected to USB (type C), but would not appear in the system. It appears there cp2102 usb bridge was in a bad state, since the voltage on D+ was about 1.6v.

I later found a more experienced board developer on Fiverr to review my schematic and layout, where he identified a few issues I needed to correct. 

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