!rant
Worked all day and got my embedded systems project working the first time! Bluetooth as well! 😁

It's a Fitbit clone that keeps track of steps that I did from scratch and writing the companion app from scratch as well in flutter/dart. Ask any questions if you're curious!

That's really interesting, I wouldn't know where to begin on the hardware side. I'm guessing you sourced the components, designed the PCB? Would love a high level overview of the process and how you approached it!

10/10
Fucking cool.

I don't even care if its useful or not. It's nice to see someone being able to have good knowledge of multiple fields and putting it all together into a Project!

Kudos to you.

How did you get the PCB etched? I never get them looking that nice

If you build-in a 24/7 heart rate monitor, I wanna buy your clone please

@BigBoo it's even more fucking cool because its useful.

Love to see some video where you explain how you built & planned it!!!

I'm myself currently considering doing such a project and I'm still researching. Is this a Single-Board Computer (If yes, how much RAM ?) you designed or what is it ?

@j4cobgarby I went through oshpark.com! Very nice and great service!

@hypervtechnics
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

I mean. I've never found anyone who actually thought something like this is useful.

That's why they are just cheap electronical garbage. And this is that with Bluetooth.

You can literally just use the sensors in your phone to achieve this and not develop a new device.

But I still think it's very cool that someone took the time and effort to apply their knowledge in multiple fields to do something. I think it's telling of great potential to be able to create stuff with your own two hands.

professional soldering man 👌

@nate Sure thing! (Everything is on my GitHub btw schematic, board and code)

So I started with breakout baords on a breadboard and wrote some basic code to make sure everything works together. Then I took all those breakout boards designs (♥️ open source hardware) and replicated the designs and combined them onto one schematic/board using eagle PCB design sw. I verified everything was connected properly based on those schematics for things like oscillators, power and ground pins.

I exported the board in a Gerber files (basically describe how to make the board for machines) and sent that off to a PCB manufacturer called oshpark.com. couple weeks later I get the board and start soldering!

I'd highly recommend it as you get that nothing to full design and feel that much prouder of it being that you built everything from scratch :)

@filthyranter yes please. I'll take 2x

@FilipeRamalho I'd love to provide some info!

The brain of this is an atmel 32u4 8bit microcontroller. So no single board computer here (uses too much power for my application). The various other chips on the board are an eeprom for storage, a real time clock for recording dates/time, accelerometer for tracking the motion of your arm, a bluetooth chip for talking to a phone and an oled display (not pictured). All in all it's turning out better than expected :)

@smit-happens I have resisted till now to look into programming microcontrollers, but if they enable this I will start right away.

Looks amazing! Did you solder each component by hand or is it reflow / pizza oven soldered?

@FilipeRamalho Come to the embedded side 📟

I'm an undergrad computer engineer so this has been my life for the past 3 years hahaha my previous project was being lead software engineer for my electric car capstone project. Worked with CI servers on a raspberry pi down to the event based super loop actually controlling the car :)

@Scade thank you! This was pizza oven style, toasted until well done 🍕

@BigBoo A self-made FitBit is very useful as you have full control over your privacy.

@smit-happens I have worked with Raspberry PI, PCB and so, but I never made my own board, but rather combined multiple boards and chips mostly with a Pi.

@hypervtechnics
It's a step counter.
There is an app for that.

You can make an app for that.

You don't even need to connect it to anything. It doesn't need Bluetooth.

Doesn't fitbits atleast have heart rate monitors?

@BigBoo very true! This is my semester long project for my senior computer engineering course. So not much I could do with the requirements :P

@AlexDeLarge thanks for the mention :)

Damn this thing actually looks really neat! I'd never expect this to be a DIY project with such great soldering and PCB quality. Are you using a heatgun or a standard iron/station? Where did you get those PCB's from? I've heard of JLCPCB but I doubt that they could come anywhere near the quality of these ones. Overall, I'm very impressed!

@smit-happens I totally get that. I remember doing even more useless things by myself and the satisfaction you get is so god damn nice.

I totally respect your skills and I think you'll be able to do some real cool shit in the future.

@BigBoo They have. But not self-made. And a watch which measures this is also more comfortable when e.g. running :)

@Condor thank you! Really appreciate it :) This was done using a reflow (toaster) oven using solder paste and a stencil from oshstencils.com. I touched up parts that didn't receive enough heat with a heat gun afterwards.

This PCB was ordered through oshpark.com. really good quality PCBs! I've used them before on separate projects in the past and have no complaints.

One more question: how do you solder those microchips on?

@BigBoo The after shock from completing a project is so enjoyable! Especially when you can actually use it in your daily routine afterwards!

Really appreciate your kind words man. I love doing this kind of stuff and seeing everyone working on their own projects only drives my passion more 😁

@j4cobgarby With a reflow oven https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

@j4cobgarby I used a reflow oven with solder paste. So basically a paste that melts into solder. However you can do this pretty easily with a heat gun and paste if you get a PCB stencil. Like the one in this picture

@smit-happens oh, that looks a lot simpler than how I solder
I'm horrible at using soldering irons

Nice work , really nice. It's finnaly find something I can really relate with you guys. I'm starting to arduino... But I can barely solder anything right... Bad irons don't help

So cool! Though I'm confused why you chose Scratch as a programming language 😋

This looks really good, nice job mate :-)

Looks good.

@bezorp well, if it works...
And any microcontroller works with bits and bytes, so any language works, as long as it's compiled to binary (I think).
It it's for the visual IDE I'll suggest XOD. Isn't all that powerful yet, for more less generic modules you have to make your own modules in the visual code, but that's no problem for a engenheir or anyone experienced with MCUs and understands eletrónics

I am impressed!!! :o

amazing stuff!!!