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Lab 2 Goal

The goal of Lab 2 was to prepare Jerry to recognize the presence of an IR signal, and to begin construction of a base station.

Lab notes

We began by building the circuit for IR detection on the Jerry breadboard. On a second breadboard, Terry, a IR emission circuit was built to test the detection circuit.

Terry was powered by the lab station's signal generator, set to a 1kHz signal, and the corresponding output was measured via the lab station's oscilloscope. See below for the output image of the oscilloscope.

Jerry's detection circuit was allowed to come into close proximity to Terry; Jerry's as able to, as shown by the serial monitor output below, detect Terry.

Terry was then brutally dismantled, and went on to become the base station.

Pictured here is Terry's circuit diagram.

Pictured here is Terry. Behold the chaos. Terry is capable of displaying 4-digit numbers, with an optional decimal place.

Problems and resolution

When testing the IR detection circuit, we encountered a problem referred in good humor to as a 'cosmic bit flip error,' or CBFE. The cause of the CBFE has yet to be determined. Unplugging and replugging Jerry seemed to solve the CBFE. Extraterrestial intervention is currently the primary suspect of this CBFE.

Terry was a pain to construct into the base station. Many revisions were made to the breadboard. Wires were cut. Wars were waged. Empires fell.

Getting Terry to display 4-digit numbers was an interesting challenge, and we were eventually able to get it to display the first four numbers, with a decimal where a comma would be implied (thereby denoting the proper location for a metric prefix).

Shown here is a large number, 98765, being broken up by Terry appropriately.

The test case of 2468

Shown in this video is the result of increasing the period between write commands to the 7-segment 4-digit display.