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View Purchasing OptionsProject update 7 of 7
A month has passed since the campaign ended and, although the month of December is complicated by all the end-of-year celebrations, our work has not stopped. We have made important progress in the development and manufacturing of USB Insight Hub with the objective of getting this great tool in your hands as soon as we can.
In recent weeks, the contractor began the manufacturing process of five pre-production units. This step is crucial since it allows us to see if the design meets the requirements for manufacturing, establishes the suppliers of the electronic and mechanical components, and defines the steps for programming and the necessary quality tests. In addition, the contractor becomes familiar with the equipment and procedures.
At the time of writing this update, the following progress has been made:
These boards contain a few changes from the previous version, mainly related to having the option to power the USB Hub chip with either its internal regulator or the external built-in regulator, as well as routing the Tear signal from the displays to the ESP32-S3 chip.
There are no major problems sourcing the components, but until everything necessary for production is purchased for all units, we can’t let our guard down. On the other hand, it is not advisable to acquire parts until the first pre-production samples are verified and it is confirmed that all the components and performance are correct.
Assembly of the components was done using a pick-and-place machine and reflow soldering. This process was carried out with two cards to ensure the design complies with the process requirements, No problems were found.
The first programming and manual testing guides have been released to verify that the hardware is working correctly. This is a highly iterative process that requires constant communication with the supplier, frequent corrections to the documentation, and occasional tweaks to the firmware. It has been possible to verify, on at least two assembled devices, that the basic functions work, but we are still in the process of running all the tests pending some tools being delivered to the contractor during this week.
The first samples of the acrylic faceplate, which contains the art and provides the protection for the screens have been received. The first prototypes (the ones presented in the campaign) had art printed on acrylic using inkjet printing cured with UV light and, although appropriate for a few samples, this technique does not scale well due to the cost of a medium production run. Consequently, the supplier recommended a screen-printing method that allows for more agile, economical, and homogeneous high quality parts, with the disadvantage of having an initial setup cost.
As for the other pieces that make up the casing, there is a small problem achieving color consistency between the 2 mm and 3 mm thickness parts, but work is being done to find solutions. Up until now, the entire process has been done remotely, exchanging photos and videos with the supplier but, to really decide on the quality and color, it is necessary to have a physical sample.
The goal is that one of these samples can be sent to my workshop before the start of the Chinese New Year, which will begin in less than two weeks. That way, we can take advantage of the fact that that part of the world is closed for almost four weeks to carry out exhaustive tests and evaluations of the pre-production sample.
The project was initially born using the Arduino IDE and, although this allowed the first prototypes to be made, at one point it became evident that under that development environment it was difficult to scale and add more functionalities. So, we decided to migrate to Platfomio, a Visual Studio Code plugin that allows you to work within the Arduino framework, but in a more professional development environment.
Not only that, but the inclusion of an embedded web server is not a trivial task, especially if you want to provide a modern design and standard functionalities (access point registration, network search, addition and management, firmware updates, among others). Much of this logic is common in many projects, so it is sub-optimal to develop it from scratch. For this reason, we decided to use ESP32-Svelte-kit, an open-source framework that provides all the functionalities expected from an embedded web server, and modify it to the specific needs of USB Insight Hub. The ESP32-Svelte-kit framework (which I recommend taking a look at) works on Platformio and was another reason for migrating the entire project.
The firmware code has undergone significant refactoring, but the effort has been worth it to give the project a better structure based on a more flexible environment that allows for proper maintenance and scaling.
Knowing that the design has been able to be replicated and that it lights up 11,000 miles (17,000km) away has its degree of satisfaction, but above all it indicates that the contractor is committed and that the design has proven suitable for production.
Of the five pre-production samples, four will be used for EMC-RED testing and the results of these tests will define whether the project remains on schedule for a production run in the second week of April. If only minor adjustments are required (additions or changes of components that don’t affect the PCB design), we can say that we are on time. On the other hand, any change to the PCB design will impact the project schedule. I estimate the results will be available in mid-March (mainly due to the long holiday in China).
Otherwise, there is still a lot of work on the software side (both embedded in the UIH and applications on the host computer side).
I will keep you informed of the progress and if there are any important updates; if you have any questions or suggestions, you can contact me using the following form.
Cheers,
David S.