Lots of Soldering Fun!

(18th Oct.) I've just spent a few hours tonight soldering up some components to the other boards;  I've been waiting over a month for some of the parts from China - which still haven't arrived!  so, I just jumped in and soldered the stock parts I had in my component boxes.

Software Sneek-peek!

Tonight I managed to tidy up and finish some more bits on the software side;  mainly working on the installer and the Temperature Profile Editor code, and a bit of work on some graphics.

The installer will install all the necessary files to create your own temperature profiles and send them to the controller over Bluetooth.

The Temperature Profile Editor allows you to create a single multi-segmented profile really easily, then you can save it;  once you have as many as you need - you can then mix'n'match your own set and upload them to the controller via the Send from the menu options.

The UI still has a few little quirks but it should be stable enough for an alpha version.

Below shows the log viewer. It seems to load the logs fine but I still need to write a short bit of code to pull them out from the controller and then save them to file but that shouldn't take very long.

Round-up August Progress Update!

I've been mostly working on the PC software side and things seem to be going well.   I managed to get the hardware detection working; it wasn't as nicely implemented as I had wished for, but it works, and I could always update the code later.

Most of today was spent on the "upload" code;  this allows the user to send firing profiles directly to the controller;  one part had me stumped for a good while until I managed to resolve it.

The only bit of code to complete now is the code to combine or merge multiple profiles into a single programme set;  but once that's complete the software should have all the features required for practical use.



I've ordered another batch of components to populate some more boards; so when they arrive I can get my soldering iron fired-up and ready to go! ;-)

I was planning on doing a demo of the controller but things didn't go as quick as I had hoped;  so - I just left it;  but I'm still hoping to do some once the final PC software is complete.

Temperature Profile Editor

Over the weekend I worked on tidying up the temperature profile editor; this allows for multi-segmented temperature profiles to created, modified and saved etc.

At the moment I'm working on some code to auto-detect the attached Kiln Controller so profiles can be seamlessly uploaded to it via Bluetooth;  the ultimate aim is to make the creation and upload of firing schedules to the controller as simple as possible.

I've also completed the log viewer, as that was just very basic code before.  I do plan to add to this at a later stage but for a version 1,  it should work fine.

Powered on!

Well, after a long day of debugging it's finally all powered up;  the PCB board required some inter-connects on the back, this was because of some mistakes in the PCB layout.   At the moment I have it running continuously, and I plan to leave it running for at least a good few days.

Almost all soldered up.

I ended up going to my local Maplins for the 3 pots I was missing;  I don't like going there unless I really have to, as it quite expensive for parts.  

Tonight I'll carefully power it up and set it up,  and then run some diagnostic tests.  I'll have to get the header strip connector for the Bluetooth module next week.

PCB's Arrived!!!

(Pic Above, Left) The boards arrived this afternoon!! and I've already "hand" placed a few components to see if they fitted correctly; I think all is good, so far at least!
















(23rd July) At 7am this morning I soldered up one of the boards before work;  I'm missing some parts though; 1 connector for the Bluetooth module and 3 pots; so I'll need to order those when I get chance.

(Pic Below) I was fairly happy with my soldering, except that I need to get some thinner solder wire as mine is too thick,  I've found the board requires a more delicate solder feed approach in order to achieve the right amount of solder for each connection.