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
Thank you. Now back to work.
To the earliest Twine backers in 2011, those of you who just discovered us and everyone in between, thank you for funding Pickup. This relationship we have on Kickstarter is special—there aren’t a lot of arenas where you can talk directly to the product makers, and where customers are willing to put down money for… Continue reading Thank you. Now back to work.
That’s a zoo, not an ecosystem.
While hobbyist IoT got nerdier, consumer IoT picked narrow lanes like thermostat or light bulb and worked on experience. Unfortunately that lasted only until growth proved shallow and users had to be squeezed for more money. And now “Internet of Things” is a poisoned brand.
Rewild physical computing.
IoT used to be cool. Them were heady days, when it felt like the physical world could be reduced to just another API target. Twine raised a large amount based on that excitement.