(you can also find a copy of this post on our Kickstarter page update)
We’re deep in the process of assembling our Rev B hardware, which is what we expect to be the production candidate for the Kickstarter delivery.
But first, we needed to address the issue of being cold at the Lab – a common complaint for us. We finally installed this King Air heater with its own circuit – no more borrowing power from the solder machines – and no more freezing our asses off.
Assembling a Board: Step 1 – program the pick and place machine
The Rev A boards we used for the initial testing were tortuously hand-assembled with tweezers and solder paste. For Rev B, we’re switching to the pick and place machine so we can efficiently crank these out by the dozens – and save our fingers and backs.
The first step for assembling a board is to program in the spots where the parts are mounted on the board. This is a fairly tedious process, but only has to be done once. Before programming the components, we mount the prototype board into a jig and align the machine to fiducial spots on the board:
Next, we start programming in the parts. Our pick and place machine has a down facing camera where each part location can be identified and programmed in:
While in this programming phase, the board will be covered in double stick tape to capture the parts and keep them from bouncing away. During a normal assembly run, the parts will be captured with sticky solder paste:
A light pipe
RaceCapture has a single RGB on-board LED to indicate various status conditions. The idea is that light would be transmitted out the top of the enclosure via a a light pipe- it’s like a Lite Brite peg you might’ve known from your childhood. This also allows the LED to be mounted on the circuit board, speeding assembly time as well.
Selecting the right light pipe was surprisingly challenging as it needed to be the right length: it needs to reach down to the top of the LED. It also needs to be aesthetically pleasing from the outside. We got in some samples recently- and I think we have a winner! Sometimes, it’s the little things that count- especially when it comes to blinky LEDs.
RaceCapture/Pro WiFi add-on
We’re pretty satisfied with the current design of the WiFi module add on for RaceCapture/Pro, so we went ahead and ordered boards for a production run. We hope to get these knocked out so current RaceCapture/Pro owners can start experimenting with automatic camera control! We’ll expand on this later when parts arrive.
Missed out on the Kickstarter?
You can still get in on a discounted system by pre-ordering here. They’re scheduled to ship right on the heels of the Kickstarter delivery!