We have been boring lately. Though in general, most of the work of manufacturing is just grinding, on the supply chain as well as on our own engineering tasks. That’s one reason I was holding off on an update. The other reason is I was hoping to hit some more milestones to report back. Got mixed news… Continue reading The production boards are looking autumnal.
Testing 1, 2, 1000
The process by which you manufacture a product at scale is itself a product, and that’s why it’s so much harder to make something for lots of people than it is to make one for yourself. The process by which you manufacture a product at scale is itself a product, and that’s why it’s so much harder to make something for lots of people than it is to make one for yourself.The process by which you manufacture a product at scale is itself a product, and that’s why it’s so much harder to make something for lots of people than it is to make one for yourself. (Never mind making it usable and supporting it.) Here’s Jeremy with more on that.
Solid as a rock
The hardware is solid now, and final hardware development is wrapped up. Next, we’re making the tools for production. Read on for what we’ve been up to. Mechanicals The final prototype came out nicely. It feels even better than it looks, as you can infer from Jeremy’s expression when I handed him the assembled final… Continue reading Solid as a rock
A lot of money was spent
We’ve been wading through a bunch of details for the last several weeks, but they’ve now coalesced into things we can describe. We have a lot to talk about. Electronics A few little bugs in that yellow board, some due to hand assembly of parts which will be machine assembled in production. Mostly mechanical placement,… Continue reading A lot of money was spent
Debugging hardware is hard
If you want a very technical illustration of why, as they say, hardware is hard, follow along as I debug a communications problem between Pickup’s two main chips. Day 1 I was working on the bus interface between Pickup’s MCU (the STM32) and its WiFi radio (an ESP32) only to find that the STM32 UART… Continue reading Debugging hardware is hard
Message boards and circuit boards
forum.supermechanical.com The messageboard is up. We want this to be an energizing place where y’all can share ideas and projects, help each other, and influence Pickup’s future development. To start us off, we have a few topics we’d like your input on. You may remember from the last update that Jeremy was working on the range of… Continue reading Message boards and circuit boards
Forward March
March has been productive. We left off last time with a major decision to change out a key component, the microcontroller that handles all of our sensor IO and power management. We’ve had our heads down for the last couple of weeks working on that and a few other things. tl;dr: New mainboard prototypes have… Continue reading Forward March
The setback episode
Since the last update, we’ve largely been sweating increasingly smaller details in the same areas as before, but it’s not all been forward motion. In any engineering project, setbacks are expected, and we had a few in the last month—though nothing major. We appreciate the comments to keep quality a priority over speed—it takes some… Continue reading The setback episode
Hardware Lyfe
Hi – we’ve been a little distracted by the holidays and more recently, the terribly cold weather (for Texas and me—some of you are made of sterner stuff). In spite of my preparations, we didn’t have hot water for two days, but it’s thawed now with no damage. This is when I break out the… Continue reading Hardware Lyfe
Pouring concrete
Hi—I wanted to post an update earlier but holidays slowed things down. We’re in the thick of measuring out and laying down the foundation— the final hardware designs that will get produced. This is some of our most critical work, as it will be costly to unwind. It’s a fiendishly complicated multi-dimensional puzzle to balance… Continue reading Pouring concrete