Progress - 28 Sept

Although I didn't have a whole lot of time (about an hour and a half...) I thought I made some really significant progress yesterday. The hardest part after finishing the chassis outer components and external hardware was to actually start the soldering and get into it. 

I had to make sure that I had all of the components ready and available. The most difficult bit of this is trying to decipher the circuit diagram and the schematic. At my current level of electronic knowledge, the schematic is too hard to decipher on my own, so I need to use the circuit diagram to help me out as well. I have read however, that the best way to learn how to read schematics is to do and to just jump right in and build. So far after working on the fibreboard  I agree with this. Previously I was terrified of this schematic that didn't make any sense to me. Afterwards, I then started to notice correlations and different things that made sense in the context of real life. Positive and negative directions, different symbols, quantities of various components and wires, etc. Very happy with my progress and although I can't work much today, I'm going to try and do a long session on Saturday to appease this. 

Earlier today, I also met with my supervisor to have a 'check-up' and to to get one of the stock research sheets signed. I explained to him the progress that I've made, plans for the future, and also my own personal optimism towards this project. He asked me some questions, made sure I was doing alright, and asked me how my research was going. I said that it was going according to plan and that I've got a huge sheet of sources that I'm going to put on noodle tools soon. He nodded and signed me off and I felt that this was a productive meeting because it was the first one where I didn't feel that I was slightly underprepared or nervous. 

Below are some pictures of the progress so far. The fibreboard looks a bit empty, but that should change in the days to come. I've also emailed Raphael to possibly have him over to review and oversee my project for a day. Make sure everything is going alright. I'm sure he will be pleased with my progress.

 The whole workspace including the chassis, fibreboard, components, tools, soldering iron, magnification light, etc. The case/house is below the desk in the back, it's barely visible.

 Fibreboard

External Capacitors

Parts Have Arrived

So, today is September the 15th, 2012. I haven't been posting much in a while because there hasn't been that much progress in the last few weeks. This is mainly because after sourcing, finding, and ordering parts, ect, there wasn't much to do. I looked through a lot of books, researched a lot of websites, ect.

Last week, I contacted my Personal Project supervisor, Mr. Weatherley, and he thought I was getting along with the project well with some "delayed production" (which I completely agree with.) Since the parts are here, I'm in the process of unboxing them and taking inventory of all my components. I also have the revised schematic which I'll post below. At some point I need to clear my desk upstairs so that I have some workspace to actually do something, can't do it on a carpet....

A few weeks back, my noodle-tools account wasn't working because the school needed to re-validate it. I lost some sources in the process so I need to go ahead and find them. That won't take too long however because I have well above the required amount of sources for this project.

 Boxes of Parts

 List of parts that came (There's 4 pages!)

 Various components

 The speakers - Jenson, nice quality

Revised Schematic