Mad "Scientists"

I think I now know why the "mad scientist" archetype in movies and such always has a maniacal laugh when they achieve their goal.  It's almost compelling, really, and it has little to do with madness.  That sense of accomplishment at having achieved a goal towards which a great amount of effort has been put is quite an emotional rush.  Last night, I populated my LED cube controller board as much as I could.  Today, I turned it on for the first time.  While it didn't work 100% perfectly, I was at least able to program the microcontroller and verify that the start-up sequence was working properly.  This is a bit like building a computer from scratch (and I don't mean by ordering a motherboard and such, I mean by building the motherboard yourself) and turning it on and seeing it go through its boot sequence for the first time.

For me, it was a major accomplishment.

The project is far from done.  The empty spots visible on the card need to be filled.  In fact, that's one of the first of several mistakes that have been uncovered in the design.  The original parts meant to go in those locations turned out to be too large to fit.  I've since found a suitable replacement which I should be receiving tomorrow.  Before that, I received the parts kit only to find that the black switches were not, as I'd inferred from the data sheet, illuminated (the white button is, however, a nifty but expensive control).  I've also found that I drew the traces to the ISP (programming) connector incorrectly (which I worked around by running wires from the connector to the right pins on the programmer), the pads that I drew for the filter capacitor (bottom right, glared out orange piece next to the power connector) were less-than-ideal, and there wasn't quite enough physical space between the switches.  Also, I didn't quite solder one of the components to the white push-button well enough but that was very easy to fix.

If I do end up having a second revision of the board made, I'll almost certainly replace the 0402 devices (mentioned in an earlier post) with larger, easier to see, easier to manipulate, and harder to lose 0603 devices.  I can now say "I did it!" (WRT those tiny devices), but I can also say "I don't want to have to do it again!"