Week 7 Progress Report

This week, the work on the ITO-coated plastic began, and is expected to be completed before work begins for week 8. In week 8, we expect to create the PDLCD in the lab.

This week we received our shipments of 3:8 decoders and an Arduino Uno. The first order of business was to put all of the decoders into their proper places in the breadboard second from the top. Then we collected  several JK flip-flops and placed them in the top row. The clock was wired to the output of the decoders and the J was wired to the signal wire and the K was wired to the ~signal wire, for each JK flip-flops. Since the JK flip flops are negative edge triggered, the enable for the decoders will have to be turned on then off to change the value of the JK flip-flops. All of this was not quite completed and is expected to be completed during the next week. These flip-flops will then be wired to transistors, which will allow or restrict power to the PDLCD segments.

This week we also began programming the Arduino Uno. We began by importing the Time library which will allow the Arduino to increment its time by one second every second. Then we set up the code to one by one examine each of the digital flip-flops and then make its value the proper value based on the current time of the Arduino's clock. Then, the Arduino will check two inputs, one of which is implemented to add one minute to the Arduino's current time, while the other one adds one hour to the Arduino's time. Each of these buttons has been programatically made to be latching. This means that instead of adding one to the time on each iteration of the Arduino, it adds one for each time the button is pressed and no more.