Packed... again

Well here we go, again... I am all packed and ready for a big trip.  There was an obvious sense of déjà vu tonight as I carried home my hard shell case full of various pieces of lab equipment.  Filling the case took the better part of an afternoon and this evening.  The rest of the day I focused on cleaning up my desk and workbench (which I always find is a terrific exercise before going away).  Prior to bubble wrapping and interlocking parts into my luggage, I laid out all my electronics, wires, screws, etc. to try and make sure I have everything necessary.  Unfortunately, I am sure something has been left out or forgotten, but I am confident I can make due with my material at hand and a dose of improvisation.

One more day

Today I started setting equipment aside for packing, cleaning up my workbench, soldering final components and 3d printing spare parts.  As the week comes to a close so does my prep work for Montana.  As you would expect there's always work I couldn't get to, but today and tomorrow I need to focus on making sure I am organised to work away from the lab.  My writing, programming and even testing can be done on the road, provided I have the correct materials.  I'll finish up tomorrow and will be ready to hit the road by the time I check-in next!

Mistakes

Today I continued testing my latest batch of circuit boards and although early tests looked good, I eventually found some errors.  My hardware (including the electronics) is designed to be modular (i.e. use this and that for one experiment, but swap out thing 1 for thing 2 and run a completely different test).  The core functionality of my circuits works as expected and has the benefit of a handful of revisions.  For more complicated experiments, additional PCBs are needed and the latest versions of these boards have error; thus I'll have to revert back to a previous version.  You might ask why I bothered to make new boards if the old ones were "good enough" and the answer is simple, I've made changes to the power supplies to reduce the noise I measure during experiments.  Also the newer boards are more compact, making them easier to set-up and adding a bit of wow factor, but I'l admit these are secondary concerns.

I'll make notes of the necessary revisions and bank these in case I have an opportunity to reprint the boards in the future, but with only a few months left until I submit my thesis, it's unlikely I'll have new boards made before I submit in September.

Despite things not working out exactly to plan, I left work with a clear sense of what to do tomorrow and Friday as I finish my preparations and pack up for Saturday's flight.  Even though I am taking some of my "old" circuit boards, I at least know what to take!  Which helps when the flight leaves in less than 70 hours.

Tests!

I started today off slowly and a bit behind schedule as I am continuing to recover from some kind of cold.  However, despite a late start, I was still able to get in a full day of work.  And that work centered around testing and fine tuning my latest batch of electronics.  I am a bit too tired to go into great detail, but I'll just say everything is on track and looking good.

Choices

Today I spent the morning and a good part of the afternoon trying to develop a web interface to communicate with my home built hardware.  This was a neat new challenge where I started to teach myself a couple new programming languages (HTML and JavaScript).  I actually started on this problem yesterday afternoon and was already having some limited success using WebSocket to bridge my web page to the TCP socket connected into the main processor of my device.  Ultimately I learned that my apparent success was a farce and that I was back at square one.  However, before diving further into the problem, I had a think about the cost/benefit of the task at hand.  While this would be a nice feature to have and a cool proof of concept to demonstrate future strategies for instrument control, I concluded that there are more important ways to spend my time.  After a quick coffee break I returned to my desk to discover that my latest PCB had arrived and I spent the rest of the day populating the board.  As it was late by the time I finished soldering all the components, I decided to wait until tomorrow to fire up and test the circuits.

Week in advance: 7-13 May

This week I plan to keep working on my various pieces of software; fine tuning bugs in advance of my work overseas.  Once my new PCB comes in I'll need to populate the board debug any issues.  Finally, if there's time, I'd like to put everything together and run a few measurements in the lab.  This last test could be pushed out to the coming weeks (when I am away working with collaborators), but let's see how the week goes.  I am trying to fight off a cold of some sorts (or recover from being sick), so I'll have to be careful not to push myself too hard.

Week in review: 31 May-6 June

Today was another work day... as I am trying to keep on top of my to do list.  I've certainly made progress this week and I think I am about where I would expect to be, meaning my planning went much better this week.  I am still excited by my work, but I am getting a little nervous about my upcoming trip.  I am in good shape, with my parts back from the mechanical workshop, but I am still waiting on a PCB which should have been delivered this past Thursday/Friday.  I need the board to solder the components and test the final product before leaving next week and I am hopeful this can still happen.  Of course a work around or alternative could be found, but this PCB is the last piece of electronics I'll build for my PhD research and in a way it's a bit symbolic of the culmination of my work.  Regardless, I'll deal with the cards I am handed so stay tuned next week.

Tired, sick?

It was a great day and my work is progressing, but I worry I might be getting sick.  Not much else to say at the moment.  Time for rest and hopefully I'll be able to carry on tomorrow.

Code

Today was a solid day of programming as I worked to up date my user interface software.  I am making solid progress and hope to finish up in the next day or so.  I also received my latest batch of parts back from the machine shop.  Not much else to say.  Still making progress, still moving forward.

Positive energy

I am feeling a certain buzz from today as I continue to make progress at school.  First up, I've finished updating a crucial section of the hardware documentation, next I wrapped up helping another student prepare for his upcoming defense, I've moved on to a new programming task and overall I feel very positive about my current situation.

Things are coming together nicely for my trip overseas and I can see how I'll be able to wrap up my lab work over the next month.  Exciting times!

How many days?

Back to work this morning... to start my day I took care of the backlog of emails, paperwork and arrangements for my conference trip in August.  Later in the day I spent time preparing bits and pieces for my trip later this month (making cables, 3d printing parts, etc).  I also spent a touch of time adding to my documentation files.  I ended the day helping another student who is finishing their work in advance of his PhD exam next week.

Looking at the calendar, I have just over 10 days before I head off overseas again.  Things are looking good, but the days are flying.  I think it'll be a long weekend in the lab, but we'll see how things work out.

Day away

With school closed due to a public holiday, I took the day off.  Back to work tomorrow...

Week in advance: 31 May-6 June

Continuing on from yesterday's "cliff-hanger" of a post where I purposed two options, I've decided on a third choice.  I will continue with my writing/documentation of my hardware and software, but I'll also continue to use and test my instruments and programming.  In two weeks when I head overseas again not only do I want others to know how to use these devices (i.e. have a proper user's manual), but I also want the hardware to work.  The next two weeks and my time in Montana will most likely be the end of experimental work portion of my PhD.  This notion works well with my expectation to submit my thesis at the end of September.  However, I need to shake out any new or remaining bugs so that my time abroad can go smoothly.

In the coming week I will simultaneous tackle small pieces of the help documents while setting up and running tests with the actual hardware.