Anelok: fully dressed

Werner Almesberger werner at almesberger.net
Fri Jan 30 14:00:55 UTC 2015


Felix wrote:
> That really looks lika a final production product!

Yeah, the case looks pretty decent now. Remaining issues of the
case:

- how to keep paint out of the window (more about this later),

- perhaps add some visual feature for the slider location (I have
  a partial experiment of that drying),

- mechanical stability. Right now, everything is held together by
  friction. This really wants screws. But that's perhaps already a
  post-prototypes stage feature.

Apart from the case, there are three more things that need testing
in the circuit:

- memory card holder. I didn't place them yet because they may
  interfere with some traces running under them (my DIY boards are
  particularly vulnerable to this). I've used the card holders in
  the 2013 design (the one with the  wheel), so I don't expect any
  untoward surprises there.

- RF: can the CC2543 send and receive ? So far, all I've tested is
  that the chip is alive. In Y-Box, I also tested transmission, so
  the design per se should be okay.

- battery operation. This still needs debugging. Right now, I can
  run and operate Anelok with a battery voltage of 3.0 V but the
  display gets very dim - I first didn't even notice it was on - if
  I reduce this to 2.8 V. Maybe a problem with the boost converter.

  The firmware is also quite wasteful - it never sleeps, so the
  KL26 alone continuously draws some 8 mA at 3.0 V.

> I wish I've some spare
> time to help at least with the software part :(

It's easy ! With the simulator, getting started takes hardly any time
at all. And it's 100% friendly C and good honest Makefiles (with a
few small shell and Perl scripts thrown in for style), no nasty C++
or Java with bizarre IDEs.

- Werner



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