Aren't I supposed to be on vacation?

Post date: May 7, 2014 5:59:35 PM

Sitting in my room in Key West (I burn easy, so I go out to the beach late) and working on the project (yes, that's relaxing for me) and I had a bunch of thoughts.

I found a nice 3d Ukulele model on GrabCad (http://grabcad.com/library/ukulele) that I started to model using FreeCAD (http://www.freecadweb.org/). Not the most stable of platforms and you definitely don't want to run it on a MacBook in a VM while running Altium (like I am now), but it sufficed to start to flesh out how this goes together.

First, the board can only have the display and interface (a 2 axis with select switch for now) on the top side. This is dictated by the length of the side of the body of the Uke that is reasonably flat (where most pickup controls go). That meant that I had to throw out the top side USB connection, which is probably for the best anyway. I'm planning on running that out the side near the bottom. I found a mini USB panel mount cable with a 16.5mm diameter. Shouldn't look all that bad.

The board can be longer to hold other parts (like the Bluetooth module) since that sticks into the interior of the Uke.

Still need to finish up the display board, but it's starting to take shape now that I have a general plan for mounting it.