RFNM’s Development Blog
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Discontinuing the Granita daughterboard
Discontinuing hardware we spent months of full time effort on is a difficult choice. Unfortunately, the Granita chip has a long list of open issues: In addition to the issues themselves, it has also become impossible to talk to Actric Semi. Emails go unanswered, including invites to visit in person. Their last communication (following 20…
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Orders open for the second batch
Now that the first batch is shipped and most of the manufacturing kinks are ironed out*, we are opening up preorders for the second batch. We will begin manufacturing it when we reach a funding target which is close to our manufacturing break-even point, and it should be ready to ship about three months from…
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95% shipped
The first batch is 95% shipped (5% of you are on holiday, apparently). Motherboard, Lime and Breakout boards went easy. Granita was an absolute nightmare. Don’t let your PCB manufacturer decide on soldermask thickness? Well, not really. The heading should be more like “don’t use a bad PCB manufacturer”. Multi-CB striked again. Let’s simply take…
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Manufacturing update
Motherboard What’s missing: Expected timeline: Granita What’s missing: Expected timeline: Lime What’s missing: Expected timeline: Breakout board Those are being manufactured in good volumes and should be here before anything else is in a shippable condition. Motherboard heatsink Also currently being manufactured, also in good volumes, will also be here before the end of March.…
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EOD update
Welcome to the EOD (End of December) update! It can be summed up with a single word: March (or April for Granita). Here is what happened over the last couple of months: Motherboard Motherboard Rev2 has a few improvements: Motherboard Rev3, which will go into production without any further testing, will have another few improvements:…
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Mid-Campaign Update
We have two weeks to go on our crowdfunding campaign, which will close on the 24th of October. The response to the campaign so far has been “not great, not terrible”. We hope to receive more orders in the near future. Planning for less units than anticipated has a few consequences: Overall, we remain optimistic…
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Ready, Steady, Go!
We are just nine months in. Granita and Lime After the successful motherboard bringup, our two RF daughterboards accidentally named after summer specials are also working. With those, the hardware can be proven end to end! It’s hard to recount the process, but in a nutshell, the LMS7002M was a pleasure to work with. Well…
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First Hardware!
Or, how the motherboard apparently works?! After two weeks of intensive physic sessions and a trip to the CNC shop to drill a tiny hole and untie a power plane from ground (a small extra left behind by the PCB manufacturer) … everything just sort of works? Maybe getting a complex design right the first…