Building a case for the Colonel
Continuing from where I left off, after cleaning up the soldering job on the small board, I moved on to planning out the layout of parts in the lid…
As previously mentioned, my intention was for the lid to be reserved for components specifically connected to the NodeMCU, while the base of the case be used for the Arduino / sensors.
On top of that initial concept, a couple of other considerations I had in mind as I was trying to map this out were:
Power was going to be fed up from the Arduino in the case
The location of the USB port on the NodeMCU as I didn’t want to block it off/make it inaccessible,
The position of the antenna as I wanted it as high and centred as possible when open,
The height of the clock calendar chip as if I mounted it into the board with the pins, that it would be too tall for the box lid and stick out significantly . I needed to get creative and figured out that by adding a leg/stand to the board, and using the pins as support, I was able to mount the clock parallel to the proto-board.
(There may have been some secondary consideration going into the possible location for a 16x2 LCD screen),
Once I figured out that the upper left corner of the protoboard was my best placement option, I installed a couple of mounting rails to the protoboard for the NodeMCU and ran wires from the pins I already knew I was using: Rx, Tx (serial communication), D1 and D2 (for I2C), Vin & Ground and connected them to the rail on the small board.
While I was working on the small board, I decided to add a couple of rails for 5v and ground for anything I might want to add in the future.
It was around this time where things had been running smoothly for long enough, and it was time to inject some learning into the project. For some reason I couldn’t get the Uno to power the NodeMCU. At first I thought that I may have read incorrect info that said it was possible, until I found more sources that said it was possible… and found a forum post where someone had the exact same problem. Turns out the jumper wire they were using to connect things was junk, and as soon as they replaced it all was good. It was the same for me!
Its not pretty, but I even got a temporary spot for the temperature/humidity sensor. (the little blue thing on the white board - I’m going to build a small (wired) sensor plate/probe that can be left in the garden in places the box won’t fit)
As everything on and I didn’t smell smoke, I checked the serial monitor and the Uno’s sensors were working!
I checked my spreadsheet… the day was wrong but it was posting sensor data!
Confirmation: Sensors in the Uno work
Confirmation: Data posted to the internet
5 minutes later the date was correct.
