Arduino Finished!!!

I finally finished the arduino! I ended up having to etch a new board because the one I talked about in the last post was screwed up because I mirrored the wrong side and the traces were completely backwards, so I went with the single sided version because I didn't feel like screwing with it again. I got an old serial cable from the school's crap closet and hooked it up and ZOMG!!!! it didn't work. Turns out the serial pin layout on this arduino was backward too!!! Not my fault this time. but that's the only thing that was so I was able to cut up the serial cable and rewire it to work, and I was able to transfer the blink program without a hitch! I'm super pumped and have a mile wide grin right now. Here's some documentation of the journey:

Here's ironing on the toner transfer (printed from a laser printer on a overhead transparency). Prepping it with water and a steel wool pad, as well as preheating the board before putting the transparency on seemed to help, but I suspect waxpaper or photopaper works better.

This is what the board looked like before the ironing took place (Note: masking tape is crap, srsly).

This is the board after ironing and cutting to size (It all didn't stick that well, so I had to fill in the traces with a sharpie, yes a sharpie, it works amazingly well as an etch resist, I swear)

This is the bottom of the board after etching and soldering (told you the sharpie worked well)

And this is the finished product! Pretty sweet eh?

Below is a video I threw up on youtube of the blink program running on it. It's basically a "hello world" for hardware.



Next up on the hardware list is the OBDII interface, but I still need to get the two usb chips that mouser didn't have, but the good news is that the manufacturer offers free samples of them! w00t!