• What did you do this week? 

I received all my components from Sparkfun and Digikey, which can be seen below. You may be wondering whats in the syringes. One is thermal paste while the other is solder paste.

Here are all the SMD components in their electrostatic discharge bags (too small to be photographed individually)

I also soldered headers onto the microcontroller.

I wrote the program for device as well, which can be found here

• Describe the problems you encountered

One challenge I ran into when soldering the headers  to the microcontroller board was ensuring that the headers were aligned perfectly perpendicular to the board.  This was very important because if they were not perpendicular, it may not fit in the socket on the custom PCB.  I solved this problem  by just soldering one pin to the PCB and then I could adjust it as needed by just applying heat to that one connection.

• Describe the successes you had

One success I had was completing the program that the Thermoelectric Bracelet will run.  Professor Ponto verified that there weren’t any blatant errors so I consider that a success. Of course, there will most likely some small debugging errors that I will have to deal with, but the foundation is there.

• Are you on schedule?

I am actually currently ahead of schedule because I initially overestimated the time it would take to ship my board. I received an email saying that three PCBs should be here on Friday.

• What do you plan to do next week?

Next week, I plan to solder the surface mount components to the board and perform a variety of different tests to ensure it is functioning as designed.