Dear backers,

We delayed our update while some things were still up in the air, since we wanted to make sure we went through everything before we posted any promises. But now, we finally we got some exciting news that we would like to share with you, including our progress towards delivering the products to Crowd Supply’s distribution warehouse.

What’s been going on

In the previous update, we announced that we had some issues with Eduponics Mini 2.0, we had to solve this issue by literally unpacking, reordering, replacing and packing back all the kits to ensure the quality of product we promised to our backers. The water regulator has been replaced to fit the pump, the pump hose has been replaced to fit the valve. And the valve comes with the right converter to fit the pump. Besides that, labels were re-ordered and attached to each product properly according to regulations. Additionally, all the sensors including the soil moisture sensor and the water quantity sensor were tested before sealing the kit all together.

We are happy to say that all the kits, water quantity sensors, soil moisture sensors, valve extensions, and ESP32 dev boards have been through-fully tested and packaged for delivery. Below is the video unboxing of the kit and what comes with it:

Eduponics Mini v2.0 unboxing

Another issue we faced is the QMP barometric air pressure and humidity sensor gave wrong results. It was definitely a software issue but took a while to figure out why. At the end, we realised it has to do with the time it takes the sensor to heat-up before being ready for data sampling. The code has now been modified and fully working.

More software updates

• It's been a while since Eduponics v1.0 so we've updated the entire Eduponics firmware from MicroPython v1.3 to 1.20. The updated .bin file together with Eduponics library built in is available in Eduponics GitHub repository.
• We've also added the missing samples such as SHT30 and QMP sensors to the repo too.
• The I2C library in MicroPython has been deprecated so we replaced it with SoftI2C in all the code that requires so.

What is left

Before delivery, we need to test the Eduponics extension board again. We found some issue related to firmware, and after updating the entire firmware, it seems the issue has been fixed. However, we will test once again and if all is good, we will prepare for packaging and delivery.

Currently, we are releasing schematics of all the new designs and sensors to our GitHub page, we also working to create 3D step files of all the hardware (some are not available yet) for your convenience of use.

Although all code examples are available, the wiki documentation lacks some of the explanation regarding the sensors and their usage. we will update the wiki to include all the latest information and of course update the sample code where necessary, due to the changes in the I2C library.