Hogwarts Wand Assembly

The wand electronics were assembled by several of the members of GC. The wand is based on a small circuit board (you can see the circuit and the printed circuit board design on other pages in this website.)

The hardest part of the PCB assembly was the accelerometer. The accelerometer was hand soldered onto a small daughter board which was then soldered to the main PCB. The remaining components included resistors, LEDs, capacitors, the PIC microcontroller, and a 32.768kHz crystal. (The wand runs off the internal 8MHz RC oscillator when it is being used, but slows down to 32.768kHz when it has been still for a while (which saves power). The 32.768kHz oscillator is also used to track the date and time.)

The battery consists of 3 alkaline AA cells soldered together end to end. This battery pack is then wrapped in aluminum from a coke can to give it strength. Wires electrically connect the battery to the wand PCB, and the battery pack is physically attached to the PCB with popsicle sticks and hot glue. The resulting wand is encased in plastic.


This file Copyright (C) 2006 by Nathan (Acorn) Pooley
Go to TOP Wand page
Go to Acorn's personal webpage
Go to Hogwarts website: www.gotohogwarts.com
Snout: www.snout.org/game
Gadgets of Justice Unlimited
File created by Acorn on Sat Sep 16, 2006