Notes from the workbench

I picked up a kit to build a little desk gauge, the kind with a needle and a warm amber backlight, mostly because I wanted an excuse to practice soldering something that wasn't going to be hidden inside a project box.

The first attempt had a cold joint on the display driver that took two evenings to track down, because the symptom looked electrical and the cause was mechanical. A little flex in the board was enough to make the reading jump every time someone walked past the desk.

Once that was sorted the rest came together in an evening. The needle sweeps up on boot and settles, which is a completely unnecessary flourish and also the entire reason I built it.

Next time I want to try driving the display straight from a microcontroller instead of the kit's board, mostly so I can make the boot sweep configurable. No promises on the timeline.