For discussion – next steps

Posted on by crackingcontraptions_3voi0v

TS06.3

Goals in priority order

  • Establish our process for board replication. That, by itself, is plenty of work, and a lot of unknowns.
  • Evaluate alternative components for TS06.4 

Steps

I’m all for keeping the TS06.3 iteration simple. I propose we only fix immediate shortcomings, so we can focus energy on setting up our production process.

  1. Clean up what we have right now – pin assignments, leds, connectors, jumpers.
  2. Not add any new functionality that demands extra software, because I think we will iterate on the h/w again before I have ranging, BLE uploads, and simple PC data display working.
  3. The exception to the above is, maybe to provide hooks so we can measure power consumption, or you can explore power supply/energy harvesting
  4. Decide on our board design/production process, so we can bang out new boards quickly, and confidently. Would a reasonable target be to go from proposed change to flashing the board in under a month?
  5. Replicate a few more (N~8) units for us both to play around with.

Other things to discuss

  • Smaller? Only to go smaller if it just happens as a result of cleanup, not to make it a goal?
  • Enclosure?  None?
  • Experiment with a less clunky JLINK connector. e.g. Plug-of-nails?
  • Above connector externalizes POW, GND, I2C, USART, 2nd SPI to allow for hacky pre-TS06.4 experiments
  • Remove most of the jumper connections – especially around the DW which doesn’t really need them. Maybe only scratch-able/solderable links?
  • PSU – do we need to experiment with anything?
  • Support for DC’s energy-harvesting experiments?
  • Provide battery option to allow for quick-and-dirty ranging experiments. Could we use a USB battery pack if the USB connector was different?
  • Colored LEDs on unused Nordic pins?

TS06.4

I’m optimistically calling this 6.4, but there might be other iterations required before we get here. It just here to set a context for discussing TS06.3

Goals in priority order

  1. Power management – enhancements to drive down power usage, and simplify the user’s recharging experience.
  2. More data storage (this may be #1)
  3. Another step down in size towards wear-ability.
  4. Experiment with potential enclosures
  5. IMU

TS06.5

The first version we try to wear for extended experiments.

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