Tweets
Replying to @josecastillo
so many toys. Improved testing board for the flex connector, improved power supply board for testing current consumption. Also the SPI Flash board, which I hope will help me flesh out the watch library’s SPI driver (that currently doesn’t, y’know, “exist” as such 🤫)
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dear @oshpark I love you. New flexy sensor boards were waiting for me on my return to the shop. I’m particularly stoked about these two. The top one has a cutout for a REVERSE MOUNT phototransistor. And the bottom one might (might!) end up being part of the Crowd Supply campaign.
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again with all of this.
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Replying to @Alie_GG
this reminds me of Steve Jobs’s “lost” 1983 talk — which is predictive in a whole lot of other ways — but stands out for describing the iPad in an era when the Mac didn’t exist yet, and most of Apple’s business hinged on the Apple II. https://lifelibertytech.com/2012/10/02/the-lost-steve-jobs-speech-from-1983-foreshadowing-wireless-networking-the-ipad-and-the-app-store/
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Replying to @josecastillo
also: returning to NYC when you were last here in DST
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Replying to @josecastillo
it’s Her Royal Highness’s stainless steel stencil AND SHE CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT IT.
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one carry-on bag and one personal item
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Replying to @josecastillo
And of course if you’d like to know more about the Sensor Watch — including how you may be able to get your hands on one of these freshly baked boards — you can sign up for updates on the project’s @crowd_supply prelaunch page here! https://www.crowdsupply.com/oddly-specific-objects/sensor-watch
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Replying to @josecastillo
ANYWAY! If you didn’t see the livestream yesterday, check it out! We didn’t turn on that pick & place for show; @MakeAugusta manufactured fully 40 of these boards during the last half of the stream. Mega thanks to @helenleigh for hosting a jam-packed hour! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6T1hul6tOjA
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Replying to @josecastillo
In the end this board ended up being quite reasonable to manufacture: the pick & place purred with mostly 0603 parts + a couple of 0402’s. The PCB flex wasn’t even a curveball really: the team caught and resolved it before it became an issue. Major props to @MakeAugusta for this!
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Replying to @josecastillo
Everything that is has to be made! You may contract out your manufacturing, but that doesn’t mean it arrives from on high on the wings of angels. Someone has to make it. Robot arms? Human hands? Invariably, it’s going to be a bit of both.
Keep this in mind when designing things.(original)
Replying to @josecastillo
Another thought, of a sort: there was 1 hand-placed part. The 9-pin flex connector is one the machine could place, but it would require some extra dialing in. So for this small run of 100, Chris hand-placed it. Not something to change really, just reiterating a note from earlier:
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Replying to @josecastillo
The lesson learned here though is that I should plan for 10% overage on my most critical part, but maybe 15% extra on others. If we’d lost 3 or 4 crystals, the lack of those would’ve limited the number of fully assembled boards we could run even if we had enough microcontrollers.
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Replying to @josecastillo
Technically we lost 3 crystals and 1 MCU during the run, but Chris fished them out and hand-placed them. In the end, Mouser must have sent an extra MCU because we ended up with 111 boards. Negative component loss! (the last one needs a crystal and LED, but I’ll add them on later)
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Replying to @josecastillo
Speaking of extra stuff: loss. It’s inevitable: you’ll lose some components when manufacturing. My manufacturing order was for 100 boards, but I provided extra components: full reels of passives (they’re cheap!), and 110 of my critical parts: the MCU, quartz crystal and LED. 6/?
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Replying to @josecastillo
So we called an audible: since I had ordered plenty of extra panels, we broke them in half and ran them 10-up. Less flex in the panels, higher yield, and a lesson learned for the next time I panelize thin circuit boards: maybe go 10- or 12-up, in two rows instead of four. 5/
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Replying to @josecastillo
But this isn’t a standard 1.6mm PCB; it’s just 0.6mm thin. When we did the test board on Thursday, Chris (@robojeep on here) noticed that the thin PCB flexed more than he would like when placing the MCU. This didn’t matter when I was hand-assembling, but for the robot, it did. 4/
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Replying to @josecastillo
What do I mean by that? I mean to say that everything that is has to be made, and the processes that get you to a prototype aren’t necessarily the same ones that will get you to mass production. For example: look at this panel. 20-up for a board this size made sense to me… 3/
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Replying to @josecastillo
So, @pencerw of @the_prepared (newsletter + workshop in Brooklyn) has always advocated for being present the first time your object gets manufactured, and I can see why: you know a lot about the thing you’re making, but you don’t necessarily know a lot about making your thing. 2/
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Wow. OK. We need to debrief after yesterday’s Sensor Watch whirlwind. In short tho: HUGE success. I came hoping to manufacture 100 of these boards. This is 111: 11 panels of 10 plus 1 in the watch. Many lessons learned, much knowledge to share if yall’ll indulge me. A THREAD! 1/?
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Replying to @mycoliza
seriously another streaming service?
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let’s make thinkfriend real. I believe in us. we can do it together. https://twitter.com/NanoRaptor/status/1459338118104948736
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I swear we all have brain worms 🙃 https://mobile.twitter.com/search?q=filter%3Afollows%20Forbidden
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Happening now, live from the assembly line! https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=6T1hul6tOjA
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Replying to @MarkKomus and @BlitzCityDIY
// do not remove this comment, code does not work without it
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Replying to @josecastillo
posted the backside as well because I’m also pleased with the improved silkscreen legibility on this spin; I embiggened the text and scooted some things around to fit as much documentation as I could on this one-inch-diameter board.
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Baby’s first close-up! We made one board at @MakeAugusta last night just to ensure the settings were dialed in, and boy were they dialed in. (The boards are blue this time because this is a special “Parts Shortage” edition, with a red/blue LED instead of the unobtanium red/green.
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back when I was a tech consultant, I used to fly on two to four airplanes a week, every week, for months on end. For the first time this week I’m traveling for business for my own business, and still I feel like a kid putting on a grown-up costume.
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What a day! Spent an afternoon at the Cyber City Circuits @MakeAugusta factory, preparing to assemble a run of Sensor Watch circuit boards — live and online at tomorrow’s @crowd_supply Teardown! Be there: noon on the west coast, 3 PM on the east, 9 PM CET. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6T1hul6tOjA
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Replying to @ConfuSomu
Wow ok yeah I’m definitely ordering some of this: https://m.aliexpress.com/item/1005001397939923.html
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Replying to @keesplattel
Even a thin piece of vellum could be cool; I love the idea of being able to see the circuit board underneath, it just needs a bit more contrast.
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Replying to @keesplattel
I need to get my calipers and find out how thick it is, would love to find something with a mirror finish that I could cut to size.
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Replying to @josecastillo
Question: is this practical or readable? Answer: not particularly, no. Question: is it hecking cool? Answer: ARE YOU KIDDING ME I MEAN LOOK AT IT!!
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holy what I DID NOT KNOW THIS WAS POSSIBLE?! I don’t know if this is because it’s an older watch or because of the gold tone screen, but for at least some runs of this LCD, Casio opted not to laminate the reflective back layer, which lets us have a completely transparent display!
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Replying to @sulfuroid
I was literally just thinking about this the other day, I would definitely be interested.
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Replying to @arturo182
ugh poor language choices. Let’s try, “it’s a watch for everybody.”
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Replying to @willianpaixaoo
A battery percentage might be hard, but a low battery warning is already there! The SAM L22 has a configurable brownout detector; I’m using it to detect when the battery voltage dips below 2.5 V, which sets a flag indicating that it’s on its last legs.
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Replying to @arturo182
it’s affordable! it’s iconic! at home on the wrist of everyone from the insurgent to the celebrity. Is it masculine or feminine? Cool or nerdy? Bold? Subtle? Somehow it’s all of these and none; it’s the everyman’s and everywoman’s watch.
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Replying to @arturo182
regrettably I feel like it would have to start with this one…
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Replying to @arturo182
oh no. it me. I can feel it, my account will become this if I’m not careful.
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Replying to @carlcod_es and @ShitUserStory
I’m imagining their signature gradient with a big ol’ popover on top, “Enjoy the benefits of a Shit User Story account! Save your favorite Shit User Stories to your account, apply Shit User Stories to your own projects, and receive exclusive promotions and deals and shit!”
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home at my folks’ house; Enemy of the State was on TV when I spotted a familiar face.
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Replying to @josecastillo
oh also I had some issues with ADC linearity that I didn’t quite work through before beginning this test… a battery at 2.95 V was reading in the high 2.8’s, so this may scare us in the coming weeks. In the end only time will tell us how long it endures.
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Replying to @josecastillo
Battery test, day 1-2. We’ve dropped to 3.02 and now 3 volts, which is to be expected; we’re at the front of the curve. It should drop to 2.9 and change shortly, then remain there until mid-July or so. Not planning to update daily, but hey, we’re at the beginning so it’s novel :)
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if you stop and think about it, the things you can do with a plain old 2D printer are actually pretty neat. (at my folks’ place so this is just the best I could do with a black and white laser printer; gonna try and revive my old color printer later today)
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Replying to @JorisMeys and @theavalkyrie
also it turns out I had the wrong template, so I tried guest mode the second time. Still gated behind an email signup. Hellworld confirmed; there is no escape from the great value you’ll receive from these featured tips and promotional offers.
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Replying to @JorisMeys and @theavalkyrie
I think the reason I overlooked it is that, in our modern marketing-world nightmare, it seemed so dang reasonable for them to gate a resource like this behind account creation. my brain went “oh OF COURSE i’m going to have to fake an account to get this, because we live in hell.”
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Replying to @theavalkyrie
Turns out there’s a “Download as a guest” option, but it was so de-emphasized that they dark patterned me into creating a fake account and tweeting about it before I even noticed the link.
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As a…
Person who just wants to print a label
I would like to…
Be forced to sign up for an account
so that I can…
pollute your users table with a fake email
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There it is! Set your bookmarks now 😃 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6T1hul6tOjA https://twitter.com/crowd_supply/status/1458195191286829056
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