The Pocket Encouragement Device was an idea that popped into my head while I was laying awake at night during workcampNE. (It is basically the New England version of Habitat for Humanity. Check it out!) I thought about designing a little keychain-sized device that provided biblical encouragement at the press of a button. My original idea consisted of X3 alphanumeric displays and a minimal arduino on a custom circuit board. The device would display each verse three letters at a time, and would display a new verse each time the button was pressed.

Unfortunately, the school year was coming to a close and I didn't have much time to work on it. I began the design work with around three weeks left before break. Since this project was pretty much entirely an electronic design, I began with drawing up a minimal arduino in EAGLE and going from there.

It didn't take long for me to realize that reading something three letters at a time wouldn't work very well, so I switched to an LCD. The breadboard prototype looked like this:

Later, I designed up a 'REVISION-A' prototype board, and I had QuickTurnPCB (in South Korea) fabricate it. (All 30 of them. A choice I would later regret.) Apparently, they ran out of HASL material, becuase they upgraded me to ENIG for free. Again, I was very pleased with the boards:

The next step was to make cases. I printed 3 more prototype cases before I realized that the REVISION-A Pocket Encouragement Device was *just* a little larger than I had imagined.

The pictures up above pretty adequately describe why I stopped with the REVISION-A pretty early on. The thing was ginormous; about the size of my hand! It probably would've been 3 inches deep if I finished the case. Unfortunately, that left me with about 26 circuit boards that I'd never use. Souvenirs, maybe?

So, I started work on the REVISION-B circuit board. I designed it with size in mind, as well as mounting it at a 45 degree angle. I ordered 30 of them, again. This time, I was sent a whopping 40 boards! My eyes bugged out when I saw them all.

From there, I soldered one up and tested it. It did nothing. I soldered up another and it worked the first time. After some testing and many attempts to fix it, I just decided it was defective. Oh well.

Then, I started designing the case. I decided to do it in two parts, to simplify printing. The case for the REV-A would've been in three parts if I had finished it.

I went through around 9 different prototypes for the top and bottom of the case:

Revisions are in order from left to right, top to bottom. I did 4 revisions for the top, and 5 for the bottom.

The black case had some edges that I forgot to round. I fixed that before I started using my transluscent fillament. The fourth gray prototype of the top part of the case had fixed all of the issues. The bottom finally had all its issues fixed by the time of the translucent case.

I've made many more Pocket Encouragement Devices since the time I've started the project. I've mostly just been giving them away to friends and family.

The finished version of the code has a total of 79 Bible verses of the ESV (English Standard Version) translation on it. If I did the project again, I'd probably use the NIV (New International Version) translation instead. When compiled, the code takes up a total of 32,252 bytes, 4 bytes short of the Atmega328p-pu's flash memory. The uncompiled code is 4770 lines long.

At one point, every byte was used. I have since changed it, and it is now more efficient and it has more Bible verses. This program was my first program to make effective use of loop counters. There are no delays anywhere in the code.

If you are interested in the code, you can view it here.

If you choose to modify it, please add your name to the header at the top, but don't remove my name or Kincaid Arcade.

I designed these to be relatively simple. That included limiting the number of controls.

In an earlier design, I planned on having several extra buttons to allow the person to select a random verse from 'hope', 'encouragement', and 'peace', among others, but I decided against it.

In the end, there were only two controls: a switch and a button.

To insert the battery, match the '+' on the battery with the '+' on the case, and push it in. There will be a 'click' when it is in all the way.

To remove the battery, flip the device over, and stick a screwdriver in the hole in the bottom. Aim between the top of the battery and the black thing beyond it.

As you can probably tell, I have assembled many of these devices over the course of the past year or so. I will show you how I assemble them, for your viewing entertainment.

With the difficult part done, the last thing I do is put the boards and LCDs into cases. This adds some function, rigitity, and it just plain looks nice. Then, I give them away to family and friends.