There’s nothing like a deadline to drive progress, so I’ve imposed deadlines on myself to keep things moving. For Luggable PC Mark II Revision B, the self-imposed deadline was to get it finished (enough) to show at the Hackaday LA August Meetup. It was a mad scramble towards the end, cutting fancy feature ideas in favor of simple ones that can be done quickly within the deadline. But I made it! I took it on the Metro Gold Line train to the meetup venue SupplyFrame DesignLab. Here’s a picture somebody took of rev B sitting on the projects show-and-tell table.

Luggable PC Mark II Revision B sitting on the projects show-and-tell table along with project from other people. I’m not visible in this picture by [SpencerSkelly]

I always forget to take pictures of my own project while at a Hackaday meetup… I’m too excited talking about my project. I’m not visible in this picture. The location I spent most of my chatting time is blocked by the person with white polo shirt on the right.

Many Hackaday LA regulars are familiar with my Luggable PC Mark I, and might even be getting tired of it. Mark II was a fresh take and attracted a new wave of attention. It is always fun to share my projects with like-minded people.

A downside of mad scrambles to meet deadlines is overdose. I’m enthusiastic about Mark II and there’s still lots to problems I need to fix with rev B…. but after the deadline scramble I’m ready for a break before I start working on rev C.

I was planning to go back to learning Python, but they had a giveaway at this meetup and I was granted a Microchip MPLAB Xpress PIC16F18345 Evaluation Board. Getting some basic familiarity with these low-power (in both computation power and electrical power) microcontrollers had been on my to-do list for some time. Now that a PIC microcontroller board has dropped in my lap, I might as well run with it!