Fletchtronics

Very exciting news, Petunia has arrived! In the first post, I talked all about what prompted me to create Petunia, and some of the methods involved in creating the circuit board. Now the circuit boards have arrived, I have practiced the hot-plate soldering technique and have working prototypes to develop code on.

Petunia Prototype

As a reminder, Petunia is a device for hooking up arcade joysticks and similar controls, for example the ones found on Suzo Happ Controls. It could also conceivably be used as a small USB development kit.

There are several issues that I discovered between the time the circuit boards were ordered and now. Here's all my mistakes, as listed in the current ISSUES.txt file.

• Use a 16Mhz xtal instead of 8, at least one person says this is more stable and it's the one used on similar boards.
• Connect USB shield to ground plane. Fixed on prototypes with a blob of solder.
• 22ohm resistors in series with d+ and d- .. this one was nasty I wasn't sure it would work at all (it does).
• MOSI/MISO are swapped on the ISP header.. oopsie! ISP programming is a backup plan anyway, the thing is meant to be programmed over USB using Atmels' DFU (device firmware update) bootloader which is factory installed.
• ISP header wrongly labeled ICSP.. I guess Microchip are the only ones who use the "C". Easiest fix on the list :-)

Petunia Prototype Bottom View

So our team is busy developing software for it, I'm working on the above issues list. Hopefully Petunia will go on sale on fletchtronics.net within the next month or two.

Keep an eye out for one more post with some final words on the project and hopefully a new product announcement in coming months.

UPDATE: My friend Harrison tells me that the USB shield should not need to be connected on a peripheral device like Petunia. I disconnected the solder blob on the one I've been testing and he appears to be right. My original issue was that I wasn't getting enough voltage on a particular board without the blob. It may just have been an intermittent connection from the USB connector pin to the ground plane on just that one board.

UPDATE 2: Ms. Pacman!