The Road So Far

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By: Sydney Bailes

As we slowly approach the end of our second week here at MetaMorph, I can honestly say it has been two of the most confusing weeks of my life. Confusing in the best way of course, but confusing none the less. Like Michelle said, getting errors left and right is not fun. But what is fun (or at least satisfying) is solving those errors. And what is even more fun is getting our subcircuits approved by people smarter than us. Like my fellow interns, this past week I have been working on reviewing subcircuits for the web tools. So far I have reviewed the UV Sensor, Gyro, Proximity Sensor, Pressure Sensor, Blood Pressure Sensor, and EKG Monitor. They have all passed the peer review, and now I am just waiting for the final review on all except the UV Sensor (which I am happy to say has passed).

Now, when we say we are reviewing components that means we are going through and making sure everything is wired correctly and will work properly for futures users. This includes looking at the schematic, GME Model, and Eagles files, as well as running the Place and Route testbench. Let's take the UV Sensor I reviewed as an example.

Schematic- basically shows all the components and how they need to be hooked up.

GME Model- where we actually bring in all the components, assemble, and then test them.

Eagle Files- a components Eagle file has three parts:

  • Package- the actual size and pin/connector layout

 

  • Symbol- what the user sees

 

  • Device- combines and connects the package and symbol

Place and Route Testbench- takes the component assembly and creates Eagle files that place the components and routes, or connects them

  • Testbench

 

  • schema.brd file- shows the layout and connections of the components

Basically we look at all these different files and run these tests to check and make sure that everything that should be there is (and is wired correctly), and everything that shouldn't be there isn't. Of course it is much more complicated than that, but that's for us to worry about.

Although these past two weeks have been confusing the say the least, I know we have all learned more than we could have possibly imagined. Overall, it has been a really great experience, and I am looking forward to getting better at all this and not having to deal with as many errors (hopefully).