📒Devlog
This is the Project Matchbox Devlog page :D
Last updated
This is the Project Matchbox Devlog page :D
Last updated
September 25, 2024
We had our second workshop at the university this week...
There were around 25 participants, our largest turnout to date! We gathered lots of feedback and made lots of mistakes but that's exactly what these workshops are for!
The main issues can be summarized as follows:
Too little staff: I was estimating the staff-to-student ratio based on my experience teaching software but it turns out hardware is much trickier to teach! We will need more volunteers and helpers next workshop.
Too little time: In this workshop, we only had 2.5 hrs to complete everything and it wasn't enough. Soldering alone took more than an hour, and combined with the lack of staff, many participants had to leave the workshop with incomplete Matchboxes... :(
Fundamental components need to be explained better: We had once again made the mistake of assuming the participants had seen or could get an intuitive understanding of the components with little to no explanation. However, from our observation in the workshops, we need to start by explaining the basics much better for them to enjoy learning the more complicated possibilities toward the end.
Testing needs to be continuous: We noticed that many of the problems people were encountering were caused by small issues left unchecked and eventually snowballed into bigger composite problems that are much harder to troubleshoot. We need systems in place that can make sure participants actually complete each step properly before letting them move on to the next.
We were definitely humbled by the suboptimal results of the workshop but we were able to observe some good outcomes too!
Towards the end of the workshop, after we've sorted most of the issues for some of the participants, they were genuinely enjoying the challenge of mapping and wiring their own Matchbox. Many of them had only been introduced to a breadboard 2 hours prior!
The moment participants' faces lit up when their controllers finally worked was such a precious moment that motivated us to go further!
Some participants mentioned the ikea effect where they felt much more attached and proud of their work after they put in all that effort putting it together.
Overall this was a very productive workshop because we were exposed to many many issues that we could never have imagined if we just kept on developing on our own and never tested the product. These workshops are stressful but at the end of the day, it is worth facing problems head-on because we are engineers and solving problems is what we do!
September 11-13, 2024
Our team had the wonderful opportunity to present Matchbox as a student poster at the 8th International Symposium on Academic Makerspaces hosted at the University of Sheffield this year!
We learned a lot and we hope to channel all the feedback into improving our next prototype!
August 25, 2024
Our team is hard at work preparing for an upcoming conference and for our next workshop (planned in September) and we got some name cards printed for the conference!
August 12, 2024
The PCBs arrived today and Hei immediately got to work on the v0.3 shell design! And in record time, we had a working prototype! This much-improved v0.3 design addresses the following issues:
Tedious disassembly: the previous iterations would fall apart and scatter tiny button parts everywhere if you opened them wrong. The PCBs were also hanging loosely by a flimsy rubberband...
Way too much soldiering: prepping the previous version for workshops meant soldering a bunch of pins and the flimsy and inconsistent flex PCB to the main board. Our new solution, the zebra strip, eliminates that and makes the connection even better.
Finally, and most importantly, it creates a secure and consistent connection! This new version has the keyboard PCB fastened snugly in the bottom half of the casing, with the main pcb screwing directly into it, maximizing structural support and minimizing warping and bowing of the pcbs - which is the main cause of bad connections.
August 6, 2024
Bryan took the specifications from Hei's sketches yesterday and completed the PCB for v0.3 today! The order has been sent in so we should be able to test out our ideas soon! In the meantime Hei will begin working on the CAD for the 3D printed parts - there will be quite a drastic change for the bottom half of the shell since we are experimenting with the idea of using the shell as part of the reinforcement and tensioning of the keyboard to the main PCB. (This is a major point of failure and we hope the added reinforcement will ensure a consistent connection)
August 5, 2024
After consulting some seniors with much more experience with PCBs and assembling electronics, we were advised to take a look at zebra connectors (elastomeric connectors) for the connection. We were also given a hint that we could find them inside multimeters connecting the LCD display to the pcb...
A few multimeter disassemblies later*, we had a new design ready for the next version! Here is Hei's sketch of the components we need to make to test this prototype with the zebra connector.
*no multimeters were hurt
July 31, 2024
Well it turns out the tiny springs were no match for Bryan's soldering skills~ We managed to hand solder all the pins on the first prototype board, clamped a keyboard PCB to it and it works! The connection is much more consistent and the part is even more compact now!
July 29, 2024
Our parts for v0.3 have arrived! These parts are super tiny but they look promising! Next is to figure out how we should assemble these...
July 17, 2024
Since our first workshop ended, we have been busy sorting out all the problems the v0.2 prototype had. Today, we finally started working on the v0.3 prototype! The first thing we want to get right in this iteration is the keyboard to main pcb connection, as this was a major failure on our previous board. Getting a consistent connection on this crucial part will also make troubleshooting the other parts much more enjoyable.
With our plan in motion, Bryan began working on the isolated tester pcb we are making just to figure out a consistent connection method. The idea we want to try out this time is using some battery connector pins to individually tension each pin on the keyboard to ensure each pin on the board can be connected well and independently of each other. We've also begun the process of ordering the parts and equipment we need for this exciting new chapter!
July 16, 2024
What if we could make Matchboxes out of cardboard?
This experiment aims to try out 2 things:
Using buttons that already have the caps attached to them so the disassembly can be more streamlined
Using cardboard to make the outer shell so that no 3D printed parts are required
Overall, this quick proof of concept is successful! Although the hand-cut cardboard shell is crude, it shows how a variant option like this could solve some of our problems with the main prototype!
June 8, 2024
We had our first-ever Matchbox workshop today! We invited some of our friends to come and try assembling their own Matchboxes, and in the process, we gathered lots of useful feedback and problems that we needed to solve!
Here is a summary of the main problems we observed and the feedback we received from our friends:
The soldering part was a lot more difficult for beginners than we had anticipated. We had been working on the project for such a long time that we had unknowingly become more experienced in soldering ourselves - to the point where we vastly underestimated how difficult the soldering portion of this prototype would be for a complete beginner... Our solution will be to eliminate as much soldering as we can in the following iterations.
Assembly for certain parts required too much precision. The 3D shell and the flex PCBs were designed with too little room for error in the alignment and assembly. This meant that valuable time was lost to reassembling and realigning the parts for the controller to work at all. To fix this, we have to include more room for error and improve the versatility of the parts (accommodate for multiple orientations, or use parts that are symmetric no matter the orientation)
Too many components, no idea how to test if it's working. This problem should have been discovered earlier... When I teach children Scratch, I make sure to tell them to test every time they program a new feature or component of the game - how did I ever think we could expect people to just assemble the entire controller without giving them ways to be sure the previous steps had been done properly?!! For the next iteration, we will make sure to include good ways to test the controller at each step in the assembly - making the debugging process part of the assembly, not after it.
The wiring and remapping are still too complicated and inconvenient. Even with a fully assembled and functional controller, one of our participants couldn't intuitively remap the controller to fit her desired mapping. This means the prototype still fails at the following 2 objectives:
Be an educational hands-on experience: the assembly process should ideally teach the participants about how the controller works but we noticed that the process was still too complicated for most to digest so many people ended up just following the instructions without really gaining an understanding of how the controller works or how they could modify it.
Be accessible to modifications: If the participants leave the workshop not feeling empowered to modify and expand upon the controller's capabilities, the prototype fails to encourage tinkering and alterations. We need to come up with better ways to wire and remap buttons so that people can feel confident in opening and messing around with the Matchbox after the workshop.
In general, the controller is functional but still much too complicated for our goal of making it accessible for secondary school (middle and high school) students to use. However, from today's workshop, we have seen that our main goal of making learning hardware development fun and approachable with the use of project-based hands-on materials was successful as all the participants agree that the workshop was fun and having fun did indeed help them engage with the concepts being introduced to them.
The results of today's workshop have been incredibly encouraging. Seeing others having fun with the things we have been working on for so long gives us all the confirmation we need to know we are headed in the right direction. We hope to continuously improve the design of the Matchbox and related materials so that eventually we can bring this same challenge and enjoyment to students and educators from all across the world with our little project and share the love of creating with more!
June 3, 2024
We began printing and packing the first batch of 5 Matchbox kits in preparation for the workshop this weekend. The project also finally has a logo!
May 31, 2024
Iterating on the buttons of prototype 3, Hei improved the d-pad part to only allow for 2 directions to be pressed at once. In contrast, the old design had no limitations so you could press all four directions at once (defeating the point of a d-pad). This was done by adding a small bulb at the bottom side of the part to raise it off the breadboard to make a seesaw-esque mechanism which prevents 2 opposite direcions from getting pressed at once.
We also realized that the round buttons were just a little bit loose, making the already mushy silicone membrane buttons we chose feel a little too rattly. Hei once again solved this by adding slightly more thickness to the round buttons so the button caps sat directly against the buttons, leaving no room for rattling.
Improvements were also made to the top half of the case to make assembly and disassembly easier - this is the first Matchbox prototype we could take apart with just our hands (no tools required!) Since the Matchbox is going to be a DIY project that encourages people to take it apart to modify it, we thought it was of utmost importance that the case could be easily taken apart to make the components inside immediately accessible.
May 30, 2024
Hello! We finally received our custom PCBs ordered two weeks ago! Hei and I spent the better half of the previous 2 days trying to figure out a consistent assembly method to put all the parts together... Keyboard PCBs have been the bane of our existence since day one but it looks like we finally figured something out! Take a look at our current latest model - Matchbox Prototype 3!
May 18, 2024
Hello! Bryan here. I'm working on the PCB design of the Matchbox to replace the v0's soldering cables. We hope to minimize soldering work in the assembly process of the Matchbox. As our leader, Enoch, has been struggling to solder those cables between the board and the Keyboard matrix receiver.
April 16, 2024
Wow, this project is off to a great start! After one intense weekend of tinkering at the university, Hei managed to create a working 3D-printed shell for the controller on his first try!!!
It's amazing to have someone so familiar with 3D printing on the team because Hei could foresee and prevent lots of small errors, errors that would have taken me weeks to figure out on my own!
April 8, 2024
Hello world! We’re gonna recycle old keyboards to make affordable DIY gamepad kits for kids! After a bit of tinkering, @mcscwell @heiinhongkong and I have come up with our first working prototype! Apart from looking like an absolute fire hazard, this v0 prototype features 15 key custom remapping, all without the help of any software or emulation! We are hoping the simplicity of this idea can keep costs low and make the project more accessible for more people to get into electrical engineering! On a personal note, this project has been the perfect opportunity for me to finally begin learning about developing hardware. I’ve been wanting to work on hardware projects for the longest time and when this opportunity presented itself I simply had to drop everything to make it happen! Looking forward to sharing more of our progress soon!
-Enoch
