I will get straight to the point: due to spending a lot of time on my school research project and difficulties with this project, I've stopped working on the squidpad.

Difficulties

I have been unable to program the MSP430F5514 microcontroller using my launchpad. Due to this chip being amongst the first DFN chips I have soldered and my unfamiliarity with the code composer studio toolchain, I am unable to pinpoint the problem. The console reads "No valid device detected", and I'm not seeing any oscillation on either of the crystal pins.

At this point, the problem may be any of the following:

• A problem in my design. I tried as best as I could to follow the datasheet, but I could have easily made a mistake.
• The pins not being connected correctly due to poor soldering. I have given them a visual check and re-reflown the chip, but all to no avail.
• The chip being damaged because of high temperatures during soldering. I normally find IC's to be pretty resilient to excessive amounts of heat, but I may have pushed it too far when trying to solder it, as this was my first stencilled design.
• A problem with my programming setup. I have tried using the Spy-Bi-Wire, even flipping the test and data pins, but I may have connected something wrong. Or perhaps, contrary to what I've read, this chip didn't come pre-programmed with the USB bootstrap loader, and it doesn't have the correct fuse settings.

It would take quite some time to rule out all these factors, which is a constrained resource at the moment, because...

School

As I mentioned in the precious log, I am currently in my final year of high school. In the Netherlands, all high school students are required to do a research or design project to finish their school. I want to investigate whether the flow speed of an ionic solution has any effect on its specific resistance. This is fairly challenging to do, and because I want to do it properly, its sucking up a lot of my time.

Because of this, I don't have the time to finish this project at the moment. That being said though...

Going forward

If I were to pick up this project again, I would make a breakout board for the TQFP version of the MSP430F5514. Then, I could rule out the soldering problems, as I do have experience soldering TQFP IC's. I could also more easily test and improve my design. Furthermore, different programming configurations would also be a breeze to set up.

After gaining experience with that, I could either redesign the squidpad, or design the different submodules in a similar fashion. This would allow me to correct any errors in the design with ease, and be confident in the functioning of the final design.

Conclusion

Although this project may have ended, I still had fun doing it, and even learnt some things along the way. In particular, that experimenting with your microcontroller in advance is not that bad of an idea. I might decide to pick up this project again in the future. If I do, I will be sure to post an update here.

In the mean time though, if you liked this project and happen to be interested in overly complex science projects, from looking for obscure effects on the specific resistance of ionic solutions to melting icecubes in hypergravity, you may want to have a look at my site.

Thanks to anyone interested in this project, so long and thanks for all the fish!