Deep dives into electronics projects, circuit design, and hands-on engineering tutorials
After spending six revisions perfecting a Raspberry Pi Zero 2W motor hat for the Falcon Flight project, I found myself staring at a board that worked flawlessly. It carried the 10th grade SMCS class at Poolesville High School into the most successful blimp project turnout ever, and I couldn't have been prouder. Then, I got an email.
I've always wanted a proper digital microscope for inspecting solder joints and PCB traces, but commercial options are either too expensive for what you get, or too cheap to actually be useful. And, where's the fun in buying one pre-made? So, I built my own using a Raspberry Pi Zero 2W, the 12.3 megapixel HQ Camera, and a custom SPI SD card interface to surpass my original digital microscope project in every way.
Recently, I've been very interested in creating circuit boards for my various projects. However, in the past, my boards haven't been much more than basic breakout boards; they simply rerouted existing traces away from the GPIO of the SOC or microprocessor I was using, and placed them in accordance with the footprint of whatever sensor breakout board I chose. In fact, I had never truly completed a PCB project using anything more than off-the-shelf sensor modules. This project has been my first deep-dive into actual circuit board design and production, and I've learned so much along the way.
I have recently found distributed computing to be an interesting subject for me. The ability to combine multiple single-board computers into a powerful parallel-processing system opens up a world of possibilities for learning, experimentation, and performance improvements. So, I decided to build my own DIY computing cluster using 13 Udoo Quad boards running Armbian.
Thermal imaging has always fascinated me. The ability to "see" heat opens up a whole new dimension of perception, making it a powerful tool for diagnosing electrical faults, detecting insulation leaks, and even exploring the world at night. So, I decided to build my own DIY thermal camera using a Raspberry Pi, a thermal sensor, and a custom circuit board.
A desktop power supply is, in my opinion, the single most important tool for an electronics engineer to have (after a multimeter of course.) As such, building my own from an old laptop power supply was an essential step in my ECE journey, and I learned a lot about the basics of electronics design along the way.
Like most of my projects, I got my inspiration for this one by through Youtube. Specifically, I saw this video ([Brauns CNC](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzcHGjFiR0o)), and I was immediately hooked on the idea of building my own digital microscope. Although I had never experimented with using a camera module on a Raspberry Pi, I dove in headfirst.