PIC Micro, Physics, and Batteries

This post if a bit late but I thought today would be a good time to give you all an update.

School

Classes are going pretty well, I Aced all my Engineering related quizzes. Physics and Calc have proven to be a bit of a hassle so I’ve had to start visiting my Universities tutoring center and build a study group with a few other students. I didn’t do that well on the most recent physics quiz despite all the studying and tutoring that I did, At this point, I think the only thing I haven’t done is met up with my study group. I think we learn much faster working together than on our own. My Calculus, on the other hand, is going pretty well. I didn’t realize how much of an impact my study group was. My friend and I set up a group then asked a few students in the class if they wanted to join. We got about 6 people and of those 6, 4 of us went to the library on Wednesday and studied our butts off. In the end, we finished both the homework and worksheets that our teacher assigned us to be done by the end of next week. Things look to be going well so far and I’m pretty excited for next week.😁

Research

This is a bit of a school/personal thing. My Program Design class is teaching us C which is what the PIC architecture MCUs can be programmed with. I have also thought myself a good bit of assembly which is basically talking to the registers of the microcontroller. For now, I will stick to C programming and just have assembly on the side.

BATTERIES 

(I got all of these in one day)

This is probably one of the best things that have happened to me this week xD. Thursday was basically my off day having only 2 classes with a 6-hour gap in between and no quizzes/homework. I rode my bike for about 5 hours straight all over Statesboro looking for old laptop battery packs. From Office Depot to Harbor fright. The issue with these places is they are large companies meaning some laptops need to be sent back to manufacturers if there are damages. Same with power tool batteries. The stores have contracts that prevent them from disposing or giving away damaged tools/batteries. I only succeeded in getting about one from office depot and another one from a college friend. Luckily after my last class, I decided to stop by my universities tech store. They sell everything electronic from headphones to Video games. They also have a computer/phone repair center and after talking to who seemed to be the person in charge I was able to get a dell battery and a MacBook battery but I was not satisfied.

     From here I decided to take my chance with a small computer repair shop near my University. I got there about 10 minutes before closing. I told the lady at the front desk that I was looking for any old/ soon to be disposed of batteries and she directed me to a backroom full of computer parts. There I found not one but FOUR boxes filled with laptop batteries! It was literally heaven. She let me take 10 of them. I was so grateful I might come back in a few more weeks to see if I can get a couple more. With this, by the end of the day, I had 13 Battery pack. After estimating the number of batteries in each I concluded that I had about 60+ 18650 cells!! I can’t wait to test them. In fact, I already bought a cheap cell discharge circuit from Aliexpress (with a 2-month wait) that ill use to test them.

Overall This week was fantastic! I started 2 study groups, made a couple of friends, learned a new language and got a heck ton of batteries. I can’t wait to see what the next week will bring. I think its about time I begin studying for my Calc quiz but as always, Stay Teckie!