Public Lab Research note


Riffle testing

by tonyc | January 11, 2016 23:41 11 Jan 23:41 | #12577 | #12577

What I want to do

See if these dern things work.

My attempt and results

We got 4 Riffles and 4 Coquis back from MacroFab today. We will now be testing these in Portland office to see if the manufacturing process is up to snuff. If they work, we will order enough for beta test of the Riffles.

Mainly, I just want to say "WooHoo" and put some pictures on the wiki.

coqui-packs.jpg

This is how they came to us.

2016-01-11-152316.jpg

you want one now, admit it...

riffle.png

here is an extreme-low-altitude map stitched together using Hugin.

Questions and next steps

We are going to see if this thing turns on or not, and post progress as we go.


5 Comments

Great to see the photos -- thanks for taking them so quickly! Quick items:

  • Looks from the photo that the USB part did in fact stay within the ~ 18 mm width of the board. Did it? Looks like we can tighten the cutout area around it significantly (though not necessary). That can be done without reworking the wiring of the board.

  • The artwork can be cleaned up. We should label the two "raw" battery pin headers as "+" and "-". We can put labels for "LITH" and "GEN" on the top of the board for the two JST connectors, matching the switch positions. And looks like we can fit e.g. "RIFFLE v0.1.1" in the space above the uSD card holder, and "publiclab.org/riffle" in smaller text below.

  • I'm a bit worried about the metal vias near the screw holes (don't know if I should be), in that metal screws could possibly make contact -- I can try to move the vias further away. But I wonder what other clever options there are. Perhaps we just recommend using rubber washers with any screws.

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Ah, yes -- just now seeing Mathew's email -- we should also put a grid of pinout artwork on the back, corresponding to the arrangement of the pins on the 2x7 output header. Had that in an earlier version, forgot to add it in.

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Also need to add CERN open hardware license info to board artwork

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Cern licence is on there:

IMG_1172.JPG

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Update on this: hardware testing is on hold while we ship these back to our fab to work on the procedure for flashing firmware on their end. We're trying to find the best way to have all this handled during production, so the things can ship directly from there, or at least not require any handling prior to shipping.

We should have flashed boards ready to test next week. Thanks for watching us sort this all out!

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