When I look at the shelves on the other side of the room in which I’m sitting right now, I’m looking at things that did not work.
The first iterations of the display modules were not direct driven (with the motor being inside the drum), but were using a geared approach – one that I copied from an Omega Split-Flap module I bought on eBay. I spent so much time designing the gears, the overall assembly, tuning the firmware so that the stepper was able to overcome the friction – but it would never really work out reliably.
I added bearings. I tuned tolerances, observed very closely what happened on every iteration. Ultimately, the result was always the same: the displays were not reliable. Now the problem with that diagnosis is that, unlike with software, where I’ve got a very well tuned sense for right, wrong, fast and slow, I had no grip on what the reason for that was: incompetence and one or more oversights and easy to resolve issues – or a fundamental design issue that can only be addressed by pivoting to another approach?
Turns out, it doesn’t really matter why something is hard. If something is not a solution, but a rabbit hole: Move on.
The frustration of never being able to get a display running sustainably took away from the fun, the joy of working on this project over time. There was a sense of relief the very moment I allowed myself to depart from the “problematic” approach and just start over.
There’s countless instances where I had to do that – and it probably is amplified by the fact that this was a fun, but steep learning curve. When you have no idea how to do something, the chance to get it right the first time is rather slim. But you either get it right or you learn something, or both.
Looking back, there’s not a single thing that remained from the original “design” – and that’s a good thing. At the end, allowing oneself to pivot means two things: Being able to learn and incorporate new information, and still having the energy to throw something old away and start fresh.
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