USB Time Capsule
Created by
[Jaxon]
• Started on July 24, 2025
A USB drive that functions as a time capsule, storing files that can only be accessed after a certain date.
24 July 2025 - Research and Beginning Schematic (3.5 hours)
- As I've never A) designed a PCB before and B) have minimal experience with hardware, I decided to start with gathering resources like the official RP2040 guide and watched some video explanations of how things like Decoupling Capacitors work. It took a while to wrap my head around how it worked.
- I started slowly creating the schematic in KiCad, figuring out how everything should be connected.
Although it's only been the first day, it's crazy how much I felt like I learned already. I feel like I'm finally understanding how everything fits together.
25 July 2025 - Schematics work (3 hours)
- I continued working on the schematic, and I learned that you can label wires with the same name to connect them. I can't believe I didn't know that before, it's so much better.
- Either way, I made major progress on the schematic and I think I have most of it done. # 26 July 2025 - Schematic (not) finished (2 hours)
- I finished the schematic, at least I thought I did.
- Turns out I misunderstood how the RTC clock worked, so I have to redo some of the schematic. I started researching how to get the LED to blink for a long time # 28 July 2025 - Schematic redone (2 hours)
- I completely finished the schematic!
# 29 July 2025 - PCB design (2 hours) - I placed all the components on the PCB and started routing the wires.
- I had to make a few changes to the schematic, but nothing major. (I forgot to take a screenshot at this point, but look at the next one to get an idea of how it looked) # 30 July 2025 - PCB design FINISHED (7 hours)
- I finished routing the PCB, and WOW did it take an age. I guess it's because I didn't really know what I was doing, but still :skull:
- It's really space inefficient, but I don't really care.
- YAY! I'm so close! It's my first PCB design, I just hope I didn't make any mistakes.
- I also started working on the BOM # 31 July 2025 - Last Sprint! (9 Hours)
- I finished picking the components, and I made the BOM!
- I added some random art to the PCB from the internet.
- I wrote the firmware for the device
- I made some last minute fixes to the PCB