![\"\"](\"http:\/\/blogs.harvard.edu\/gantspedal\/files\/2018\/04\/IMG_4106-e1525894336845-225x300.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Building this pedal has proved challenging but fun. So far, I’ve built much of the hardware based on the tutorial online. The one change I made was in the microfarads of the capacitors. The lab did not have the 10 microfarads capacitors I needed, so Evan from the Active Learning Labs told me that, since they are just being used for decoupling, that I can use 15 microfarad capacitors instead. The incremental tests throughout the build have worked, so it seems like the change will not effect the build. I plan on finishing by next Wednesday to give myself time to mess with the software components and address any issues I might have with the hardware.<\/p>\n
One of the biggest challenges I’ve had so far has been with soldering. Our first lab was the first time I had ever soldered, so I’m not particularly good at it. However, for the most part, I’ve done a fine job of making sure everything is in its right place. That being said, during my first session building the hardware, I made a mistake and placed a capacitor in the wrong space. I rushed the process, and soldered the capacitor without checking that I had placed it correctly. It took me about 20 minutes to figure out how to remove the capacitor and replace it, but afterwards, I did an incremental test on the voltage being produced by the circuit, and I was within the range the tutorial suggested. As it appears now, my mistake did not hurt the circuit, and I learned a valuable lesson to not rush myself while building.<\/p>\n
Additionally, it has been difficult to actually place the pieces in the right space. This is less of a challenge and more of an annoyance, but I have large fingers, so making sure centimeter long wires are fitting in the small circuit board has been difficult. Overall, though, I’ve enjoyed building the pedal.<\/p>\n
A new challenge that I’ve come across involved building the chassis. Sparkfun had their pre-made chassis on backorder, so I decided to buy a metal box with no holes drilled. I am not adept at drilling, so Maddie helped plan where the holes should be drilled and taught me how to do it. However, the holes I made were slightly off, so I wasn’t able to fit the circuit board into the chassis. It took me a few tries, but eventually I just sanded the hole through the box, and it fit. However, the whole I drilled for the power supply was off-center, so I have to use a battery. That’s not a problem, though, because batteries sound better than wall plugs!<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Update #3 Build Build Overview Building this pedal has proved challenging but fun. So far, I’ve built much of the hardware based on the tutorial online. The one change I made was in the microfarads of the capacitors. The lab did not have the 10 microfarads capacitors I needed, so Evan from the Active Learning […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9575,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/gantspedal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/gantspedal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/gantspedal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/gantspedal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9575"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/gantspedal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/gantspedal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/gantspedal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16\/revisions\/24"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/gantspedal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/gantspedal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/gantspedal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}