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Week 8: 2/23/2017

A project log for 2017: A Year of Hacking

Daily log of the my projects, ideas, tips, failures, etc.

eric-moyerEric Moyer 02/23/2017 at 15:460 Comments

This week I was on vacation and my plan was to work on some stagnate projects while traveling that wouldn't require a lot of effort just time (which I typically have on vacation). Well, that plan failed when I didn't bring a mini USB cable for my USB to serial converter. With pretty much all everything going to mini USB it was just an oversight. My saving grace could been my GoPro but I made a last minute decision not to bring it which is probably the only electronic device I still use that has mini USB.

My plan was to update the firmware of some additional Digistump Oak boards I have and get them connected to the cloud. I happen to also have a Particle Photon board along and I tried to make that act as a USB to serial connection however I was just not savvy enough to make it happen. (Reference: Here are some instructions on how the Bluz development board uses a Photon as a serial connection, I just couldn't get it to work.)

As always I bring a back-up project to work on in case so I spend the rest of my free time messing with my Particle Photon Internet Button and my Adafruit Circuit Playground. I have a weekend family reunion coming up this summer and my plans for the Circuit Playground is to come up with some projects for the kids to work on. I plan to do projects that involve conductive paint and/or conductive tape to have an arts and crafts feel to them.

Below is my travel set-up. I really like using old prescription bottles to hold small electronics since the bottle are also small and have a positive locking lid. They are also borderline unbreakable so they protect anything delicate from damage. I also always bring a battery pack for both working on projects and charging devices. Finally, the one cable that has come in handy is a male-to-female regular USB cable. It lets me both extend cables but also lets me organize things a little better when space is a premium.

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