Time to face facts. Well, really facts were faced days or weeks ago but for the sake of this blogpost, let's pretend like I'm facing facts today. Last weekend I finally broke down and told my friend, for whom I'm making the 5x5 box, that I was making it, failing at making it and that he wouldn't be getting it for his wedding. That took some weight off of me, especially because now I can share this blog and talk to other people about this no longer secret project.
Last weekend I made a big push. I went looking for supplies and I made do with what I could find. I salvaged some wire from old Ghost Patrol projects, which wasn't ideal to begin with, and I soldered that to the LCD I had to the pins I thought I'd need. I went down to The Shack and looked for header pins but they didn't even know what I was talking about. I also looked for some 5.7 ohm resistors so I could run the LCD backlight. I didn't know enough about resistors to find what I was looking for and neither did the sales people there. You know, it rarely occurs to me to use my phone to Google useful information in the moment. Anyway, the only thing I did find that I needed was a 10k potentiometer. Then I headed to the art supply store to look for an acceptable box or box substitute. I figured that I could at least find something acceptable to prototype on. I ended up buying a wooden box frame that people apparently use to paint. We used them to make the Ouija boards for Ghost Patrol and they worked great.
Here's what happened: I did some awful, awful soldering on the LCD. I used a super crappy Dremel rip off to try to drill and cut appropriate size holes in my wood box. It didn't work. I made one hole too close to the edge. I wrecked tons of bits on that awful machine and finally pretty much wrecked the machine itself. Wrong tool for the job. No doubt. I couldn't get the LCD to work at all. Not at all.
Here's what I learned: First, I remembered that power tools can be rented from the Berkeley Public Library. I could be using the right tools for the job. I also realized that if I wanted to really make this work, I had to go about it properly from the very beginning.
I went on SparkFun and ordered two new LCDs (I plan to make more boxes so...) and some header pins. I soldered the header pins to the LCDs. I also ordered some small breadboards but they only have 17 pins and the LCDs have 16 so I'll have to use them for something else as I'd really like to have the LCD, the potentiometer and the Polulu all on the same breadboard. Today I had my first modicum of success. I mounted one of my pinned up LCDs to the breadboard, used the tutorial I posted previously and voila, text!
I'm totally stoked just to have this minor success. I've ordered a beautiful wood box from a seller on Etsy and it should be here on Tuesday. I've devised, in my mind, an awesome self-latching system that requires no electrical bits to operate and can be opened just by sliding a credit card between the lid and the box. If I can make that work, that'll be super cool.
So I'm definitely going to keep working on this project until it reaches fruition. I had just about given up but now I have confidence I can eventually accomplish this and move on to another cool puzzle/project box idea.
