Basic Controls

The Probe

First, keep the switch on the probe set to Select

Connecting Rows

Click the Connect button on the probe

The logo should turn blue and the LEDs on the probe should also change

Now any pair of nodes you tap should get connected as you make them. In connect mode, you're creating bridges (see the glossary), so connections are made in pairs. When you've tapped the first node in a pair, the logo and Connect text on the probe will brighten to show that you're "holding" a connection, and the next thing you tap will connect to that first node.

If you make a mistake while holding a connection, click the Connect button and it will clear it and take you back to the first node. If you click the Connect button while you're not holding a node, it will leave probe mode and bring you back into idle mode (rainbowylogo, all 3 probe LEDs on.)

To get out of Connect mode, press the button again.

Encoder Connections

You can also make connections using just the clickwheel, without needing to touch the probe to the breadboard:

To activate: - Navigate to: Click > Connect > Add (or Remove)
- OR just turn the clickwheel while already in probe mode

How it works: 1. Turn the clickwheel to scroll through all available nodes: - Breadboard rows (1-60) - Nano header pins (D0-A7) - Rails (Top, Bottom, GND) - DAC (0, 1) - ADC (0-4, Probe) - GPIO (1-8) - UART (TX, RX) - Current sense (I+, I-)

1. Click the encoder button to select the highlighted node
2. Hold the encoder button to exit

The cursor will automatically hide after 5 seconds of inactivity. This is especially useful when you need precise control or want to access special functions without tapping pads.

Removing Rows

Click the Remove button

and the logo should turn reddish

Now you can swipe along the pads or tap them one at a time. Remember it only disconnects that node and anything connected to it directly, not everything on the net. So tapping say, row 25 that's connected to GND won't clear everything connected to GND, but tapping the - on the rails (for GND) would.

The special functions work the same way, tap the pad, pick one, and it will remove it. Click the button again to get out.

Probe Notes

Remember the probe is read by a resistive voltage divider, so putting your fingers on the pads (or the back sides of the 4 risers that connect those probe sense boards to the main board), or anything causing the probe tip not to be at a steady 3.3V will give you weird readings.

If you can't seem to stop playing with the switch on the probe, run the app probe calib and tap around on the board while turning the clickwheel until the place you tapped is always spot on (do this with the switch in both modes), and hold the clickwheel button to save. This adjusts the nominal 3.3V measure mode puts out should be fairly accurate enough for probing.

The Click Wheel

There are two kinds of presses, click (short press) and hold (long press). In general, a click (short) is a yes, and a hold (long) is a no/back/exit/whatever.

When I say click, it's more of a diagonal slide toward the center of the board (these encoders were meant to poke out just a little bit from the side of a tablet or whatever.)

To get to the menu, click the button and scroll through the menus, click will bring you into that menu, hold will take you back one level. If you have trouble reading stuff on the breadboard LEDs, everything is copied to the Serial terminal and the OLED (talked about in OLED Section), and adjusting the brightness may help; in the menus, it's Display Options > Bright > Menu and then scroll around until you find a level you like, then click to confirm.

Special Functions

To connect to special functions, tap the corresponding pad near the logo, it will show you a menu on the breadboard and terminal to choose them.

You can think of special functions just like any other node, the only difference is they're in a sort of "folder" so I didn't need to put a dedicated pad for each of them.

DAC Pad
 └─ 0 1 [Tap pads below selection]¹
  └─ -8V  !:.:!  +8V [Tap bottom pads or use clickwheel to select a voltage] > [click probe Connect button to confirm]²
   └─ [Tap a row to connect it to] (or if you were already "holding" a node, it'll connect there)³

(This is an ASCII version of what will show on the breadboard LEDs) ¹

²

³

GPIO Pad
 └─ ⁱ1⁰ ⁱ2⁰ ⁱ3⁰ ⁱ4⁰ 
    ₁5₀ ₁6₀ ₁7₀ ₁8₀ [Tap pads to choose which `GPIO` (left side for input, right side for output)]
     └─ [Tap a row to connect it to] (or if you were already "holding" a node, it'll connect there)

¹

The 4 user pads will be remappable in the future, but for now, top_guy is routable UART Tx and bottom_guy is routable UART Rx, and building pads are Current sense + and -.

The building pads have multiple functions: - In idle mode: Override colors for net highlighting (see Idle Mode Interactions) - In connect/remove mode: Access Current Sense (I+/I-) with marching ants visualization!

Current Sensing with Marching Ants

When you tap either building pad in connect or remove mode, you'll get access to the current sense inputs (I+ and I-). When both I+ and I- are connected to different nets in your circuit:

1. A virtual wire appears between the two nets containing the I Sense nodes
2. Animated "marching ants" flow along this wire showing current direction

The animation automatically picks the where to put the virtual "wire". It will search other nodes on the same nets that I sense + and I sense - are on it prefers places where they're on the same level so it can actually draw a connecting wire and not just be vertical lines.

!!! warning I Sense + and I Sense - go on different nets but they're shorted internally They're two ends of a 2Ω shunt resistor, so remember that these will be shorted together. You measure current in series so this is expected, but it's super easy to forget. Take this warning as the equivalent of your multimeter yelling at you when you have the probes in the current holes and have it set to voltage.

Idle Mode Net Highlighting

The main thing is that there's a lot more interaction that can be done outside of any particular mode (like not probing and the logo is rainbowy, I'm gonna call this idle mode here until I think of a good name)

Here's what's new (all of this is in idle mode):

Basic Interactions

• Tapping nets highlights them as before, but there's a slightly different animation on the row you have selected from the whole net
• The click wheel scrolls through highlighting rows as if you tapped each one

Row Selection Actions

With a row selected, here's what you can do:

Connect Button

• connect button will bring you into probing mode with the highlighted row already selected and then spit you back out to idle mode once you've made a connection to another row, or click connect again to exit

Remove Button

• remove will remove the highlighted node

Measurement Display

• if the highlighted row is a measurement (gpio input or adc) it will print the state to serial and the oled

Output Toggle

• if the highlighted row is an output (gpio output, I'll eventually do dacs too) clicking the connect button will toggle it high / low. The remove button will just unhighlight the net (there were some choices here, like make each button assigned to high / low or allow removing them, but this felt like the best way after trying them all). I will eventually add a setting for the toggle repeat rate (set to 500ms now) and a way to set it freewheeling as a clock.