Tuesday 13 March 2012

Wireless sensor node - enclosure mark 1 (11)

I got the plastic enclosure which I ordered and had a go at fitting in all of my base station components. Sadly the results were not ideal. It turns out that I had been overly optimistic about the required dimensions. The following picture shows that I was almost able to squash all of the components into the box but there was no way the lid was going to fit on properly.


I wasn't helped by the fact that the enclosure turned out to have plastic headers inside. 


This reduces the available space even further as I just want to stick a breadboard onto the bottom of the box! I was able to remove these by simply crushing/pulling them off with pliers and sanding it down.
 

The main thing which I have learnt from this is that I need more space in my base station enclosure and I really need more breadboard space to make a neater layout. To this end I have bought a new Arduino Pro Mini (so that I can solder male headers onto it), a tiny breadboard to hold the Pro Mini and a new mini USB breakout (which will also get male headers for use directly on a breadboard) board.