• Oh ho, we're half-way there... ish

    glorgana • 03/03/2022 at 06:49 • 0 comments

    So, good news and bad. Learned a bunch of stuff, but one thing I learned is that I killed the chip in the right shoe. Dang it. However! The left shoe now works yay!

    I decided, for the left shoe, to NOT replace the battery until after I re-attached the LEDs and gave it a try. Worked right away! No smashing up the protective case to get at the old battery. That is very likely when I killed the other shoe. Or when I had a short.... 

    So anyhoo, one shoe, whoo whoo.  I got the light's flashing, and glued the sole shut with Shoe Goo, so we'll see how well that sets in a day or two.

    Now to buy some new innards for the other shoe...

  • Solder and Setbacks

    glorgana • 02/04/2022 at 20:02 • 0 comments

    So if it wasn't clear, I'm pretty new at PCBs and such. I only kinda have a feel for my multimeter. Assembling and repairing something visibly broken, though, I'm solid. 

    With the most recent set of this project, I took reference photos of the mechanism in the other, less broken shoe. I used that to map out how all the wires had previously connected to each other and the board/battery.  Cool cool.

     Feeling like I was getting closer to a win, I cut some new wires, and soldered the whole think together following this new info.

    No dice.

    I have a feeling my wiring is actually pretty good, but I haven't puzzled out exactly how the board/battery work. Somewhere I'm missing a positive line, I just know it. Ah well, time to actually knuckle down and figure that little tangle out.

  • Checking for life

    glorgana • 01/28/2022 at 18:19 • 0 comments

    First attempt to resurrect the electronics after pulling them out of the right shoe. All work done on my Twitch Livestream, thank you to all the good-humored engineers who helped out. 

    It took two tries to remove the old corroded battery and add a new one. I managed to cause a short and kinda fried the first one, oops. Once the new battery was in, the multimeter showed that the little circuit board was still working, though at this point every wire had fatigued off. I also now see how the flash activate! There is a soft spring in a protected compartment that bounces against a metal plate to complete the circuit. Nifty!  The 4 LEDs also work, and turn out two are red and two are yellow.

    I glued the spring compartment back together with a touch of Aron Alpha, and secured the new battery to the board a little tighter with hot glue to reduce wiggling. A few other gentle cleanings with alcohol to get ready to start rewiring.