Silicon Valley Redneck

Back from the Maker Faire...

On my feet from 0915 straight through to 1800.  Saw lots and lots of Cool Stuff.  gathered some brochures; talked to a lot of people; exchanged business cards with a few of them.

Drooled over the 3D printers (cash situation remains such that I'm not whipping out my credit card just now).  Turns out that dual-extruder model from Type A machines that Maker Shed had listed back in December had the beta-test nature; they're planning a proper dual-extruder model for late this summer, and it'll be available as a retrofit, so if the cash situation improves (or the need escalates) I might just get the base model for starters.

Found some companies that are coming out with products more or less similar to things I had in the works... but also confirmed the continuing existence of some gaps that I'd been looking to fill.  So, some of my products-in-development rate further development, with a bit of priority.

And!  I found a potential solution to an upcoming component-availability issue.  More on that later, maybe.

Dang!  There was, now as I think of it, a product I saw in the morning and intended to buy in the afternoon - a cute mold-making kit, Just Because - and somehow didn't get back to.  Oh, well: I did take a brochure, so I suppose I can order one.

For now, it's time to rest.  And have some dinner.  And rest.

Catstrato

Yes, we took the li'l fuzzballs to the spay & neuter clinic today; dropped them off at 0730 (plus a bunch of filling-out-forms time), and retrieved them around 1630.

Predictably enough, there was a nonstop chorus of squeaks from the back seat all the way there.

Apparently, Southmoon just wouldn't hold still for the pre-anesthetic exam, so I had to sign a waiver.  Second time she's been to a vet, and both times she's been a terror.

On retrieval, they were all awake enough to be sitting up in their carriers and looking around, but only Top Hat was awake enough to be squeaking and trying to claw her way out.

It's a little quieter than usual around here this evening; Huckleberry seems almost back to normal, but the other two are resting (after some moderate scampering an hour or so after they got home).

Oh, and the post-op instructions said freshly-neutered males should use litter boxes filled with shredded paper, so I ran a couple of daily fishwraps through the shredder, replaced the litter in the front litter box... and, when Southmoon got home and saw the shredded paper, she freaked out.  Oh, well: Huckleberry didn't freak out, and he's the one who's supposed to be using it.

Putting in a good word

"Small metal shoe horn" had been on my shopping list for a week or so now; it's not a big enough item to buy from Amazon (maybe $2.50 plus $4 shipping), and I hadn't found such things in, e.g., the shoe nor foot care departments at Target.

So, I figured, I needed to stop by a real shoe store, sometime during their business hours, which is a bit awkward when my usual shopping time is a bit before 10 AM.

This afternoon I made a hardware run, which put me in the neighborhood of Beck's Shoes, so I poked my head in... and left a moment later with a couple of freebie shoe horns.

It's not like I'm a regular customer; while I have bought shoes there from time to time, the last time was at least a decade ago.

But, next time I'm in the market for real shoes, I'll probably try there first.

And another!

Another purple envelope arrived today, but that's not really the topic (that'n is a little-bitty 4-layer design for playing with in background mode: a range-boosted 802.15.4 radio module).

No, today's topic is a board that came in a couple of weeks ago, and I just got it (mostly) working, with a couple of patch wires because Careless*.  Still needs a barnacle tacked on, because I changed the design after the board was out to fab.  Also needs AVR firmware installed (probably Arduino bootloader plus a small sketch), and a connector that should be arriving Wednesday-ish.

It's my first home-baked Raspberry Pi Crust!  I'm being coy about its function for the moment, as this is meant to become a product, but it's a cute little rascal, and I should be making connections with a corner of the prospective market at the Maker Faire this coming weekend.

There's also a Beagle Cape version in the works, along with a tidied-up respin of the Pi Crust, in the next month or so.

* When you're knocking out board designs in an afternoon, and not on a deadline, and prototype fab cost is under $10, convening a $2500 formal design review Just Ain't Happenin'.  Also, those design reviews never seem to catch the sorts of errors I had on this board anyway.

Ya know what's wrong with newspapers nowadays?

If you use newspaper to protect the carpet around the litter box...

...and don't change the newspaper on a regular basis...

...it will eventually become shredded...

...and resemble kitty litter.

Just cleaned up the newspaper shreds in the hallway.  And the stuff that was hidden under them.

No wonder there was a Smell that didn't seem to go away with normal litter-box cleaning.

And I've replaced the paper with plastic, which should be less shreddable and also protect the carpet better.

Department of DUH

This morning's Murky, front page, above the fold:

Famed race in crisis mode

Sailor's death leaves officials reeling as the investigate why boat capsized on mild day

...

The America's Cup found itself in crisis on Friday, with questions about safety - and even the storied event's future - swirling a day after a celebrated sailor was killed when the Swedish team capsized its 72-foot catamaran during practice on a mild day in the bay.

Er.

Highly competitive event.  High-performance, experimental boats.  Teams pushing the boats, and themselves, to the limit.

And you expect this to be perfectly safe?

What color is the rubber in your cell?

What a revolting development.

Well, I got the USB end of the Probe-O-Zap all built, and set up so's It Oughtta Work, and....

And, while the FT201X chip has been known to work with my office workstation, the lab Linux machine happily enumerates it but doesn't recognize it as a serial port.

Because the lab machine is running kernel 2.6.32 is why.

Because it's still on Debian Squeeze, as was the shiny new Stable version a couple years back.

And that old kernel had never heard of an FT201X, what with the part just having come out last year.

And so it's time for the ol' apt-get dist-upgrade, and chewing up vast amounts of bandwidth the next few hours.

In other Probe-O-Zap-related news, I've been pondering how to package that little board and its Mystery Component, and had pretty much settled on sticking it in a mold and pouring in brightly-colored polyurethane potting compound.  Hmmm, the mold could perhaps be made of Teflon, with a nice slick hole bored in it.  Lessee, it needs a 1/2"-ish cylindrical-ish section, then a tapered step down, then a 10mm-ish bit.  Be nice if the cylindrical stretch, being a couple inches long, had a bit of a draft angle.  Now, where might I obtain a suitably-profiled reamer for the task, and what'll it cost to have it made?  Aha!  Inspiration strikes!  The profile I'm looking for bears a striking resemblance to (digs out old reference book) a .375 Weatherby cartridge.  So, all's I need is a possibly-stock chambering reamer!

(Brownells has one in stock for .375 H&H, but the shoulder diameter is too small.  Unless I taper the PC board, which is plausible.  Clymer doesn't seem to do .375 Weatherby.  Oh, well: board, encapsulation, and caliber choice are all subject to further negotiation.)

Update: Midway turns out to sell .375 Weatherby reamers (with a 30-day lead time).  Choice of slightly-undersized sizer-die reamer or exact-sized chamber finishing reamer.  I assume either of these will cut Teflon.  And, given that they're made for cutting tough grades of steel, probably last for a great many mold cavities in Teflon.

Here's one I can play!

Roaming Fire Hydrant has a poll: "My P-38 is..."

Accompanied by a photo of the dinky folding can opener whereof a copy resides among my pocket keys.  Just in case I encounter a can that needs opening, and lacks a pull-tab.

It's been there since... hm.  I remember not having one handy one day in college, and laboriously opening someone's emergency canned food in the computer lab with my pocket knife (the one I normally carried back then had quite a sturdy blade, but wasn't really much of a can opener).  I must have added the P-38 during my backpacking days, so probably around 1987.

But... I hear you cry... why was I carrying around all my keys on a backpacking trip?  I wasn't.  I bought a few P-38s; one went in my key case, and one went in the small-stuff box in my backpack.  The others are probably stashed with the spare backpacking-related stuff.

Volume

So: I look at the planned respin of the Probe-O-Zap, and figure I can shoehorn the revised & updated (and slightly more complex) design into 1.875 x 0.475 inches.

Now, how about a quick online quote for, say, 100 pieces, with a not-especially-fast turn?  Preferably panelized for more efficient assembly?

Hmph.  Even without panelization, Sunstone wants several dollars per board, in hundreds.  Sierra Circuits and PC Fab Express, at least using their easy-quote form, won't touch anything under 0.5" wide, and with that adjustment they're still only a little cheaper than Sunstone.

Given that a pile'o'boards on a 2-week-ish turn from OSH Park would run about $1.50 per board, with easy ordering... maybe I'll get in touch and see about quantity orders, and whether they can be delivered in panelized form.  And also talk to an NPI assembly house over in Fremont, that might have a favorite fab service.

Or, I could try the usual vendors' full-service options.  Which I've always assumed were even more expensive, but maybe it gets better in hundreds.  Or get in touch with an overseas fab.

Not that I'm making commitments at this point, not yet having done a market survey nor secured a steady supply of the Mystery Component.  My supplier claims to have at least hundreds available at a good price, but a single run of 100 units probably isn't worth the trouble (best guesstimate, it starts making sense at around 1000 pieces in the first year).

Update: (a) yes, OSH Park can do what I want; (b) a regular PCB manufacturer can do the same thing, cheaper, if I'm willing to order maybe 1000 pieces at a whack, which is not the case at this point, but perhaps in a few months, if the component situation proves favorable and the product really takes off.  Near-term, likely case is 10 panelettes with 20 little boards per.

Compatibility issue

This here optical mouse, Logitech model M310, doesn't work worth beans on cat fur.

Huckleberry will just have to find another place to park himself.  The mouse pad is for mice.

Besides, he's lumpy.