The purpose of this project was to demonstrate some of my skills as an Electrical Engineer to potential employers. This project required me to build and prototype a tri-state circuit, add controls with a STM32G ARM microcontroller and design/manufacture a custom printed circuit board. When you plug the device into a standard USB2A port it scrolls my portfolio website's URL across the matrix display. I designed this device to cost about $2.50 CAD per populated board.
This idea was inspired by a piece of advice that Dave Jones, the owner of the EEVblog gave. He suggests that engineers should be bringing something to an interview to show that they can actually design and build things. I sent a later version of this project to Dave Jones with a programmer PCB which he opened on a Mailbag Segment.
Currently I am using the project as a way to test and calibrate a pick and place machine.