It's been over a month since my last post here. During that time I've been mostly busy with getting InputStick ready for a CE certification process. Making a working prototype is one thing, turning it into commercially available product that's a whole other story. It turned out that my latest PCB revision failed at some tests (ESD), but after some modifications it looks like this shouldn't be a problem anymore. At this point I think that I've managed to deal with most critical things and I'm finally ready to start taking pre-orders, without risking a possibility of a massive delay.
Campaign will go live in next few days (most probably on December 27th) and will last till February 2nd 2014. Since I'm able to finish InputStick development with my own funds, this is more of a pre-order that a crowdfunding campaign. The difference is that InputStick will go into production whether or not funding goal is reached. As you'll probably notice, estimated delivery date is set to March 2014, which is more than two months form now. Why so late? Well, main reason for this is certification process, which will require a lot of paperwork and many things will depend more on availability of my test lab than on me. I will also need some time for manufacturing (up to two weeks) and finally one-two weeks for delivery. In the meantime I will have a lot of time to work on improving API and Android apps.
Glad you're back, the campaign looks good. I knew there was a reason I finally signed up to IGG earlier today... ;)
ReplyDeleteAnyway, interesting to hear about the ESD problem - I wouldn't have imagined something as fully encased as InputStick (with only the USB plug sticking out) can possibly fail ESD... If it's ok to ask, would you tell us what exactly went wrong...?
At first my approach for ESD test was similar: what could possibly go wrong... Well, I should think about Murphy's law. For +/- 2kV and 4kV everything was just fine. Hitting it with 8kV resulted in loosing Bluetooth connection, MCU reset and eventually, after several attempts I've ended up with two completely dead devices. I think that main problem here is that there is almost no free space inside the enclosure: the distance between PCB edge and enclosure is something like 0.2mm. So I had to redesign PCB (again...): improved grounding, added guard ring and some sort of "shield" along PCB edges. This was a bit of a challenge, because I'd really like the PCB to be easy to manufacture: 0603 resistors/capacitors, 2 layers, no microvias etc. Anyway, it seems like ESD is no longer a problem.
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