Next BLE #1104
Replies: 60 comments
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Posted at 2017-09-07 by @gfwilliams Well spotted! It's a prototype I've been experimenting with - sans penguin. Is there interest in that kind of thing? nRF52 with a voltage regulator on a 0.1" board. There were a few requests when Puck.js was released, but nothing recently. At the moment the thing that's stopping me diving ahead with it is I'm in two minds about the manufacturing. I keep trying to make the boards easier to manufacture but Seeed have been getting progressively more expensive. This board in particular is ridiculously simple, and I'm considering just trying to make small batches up myself - and if the sales do well enough, hire someone for it. It'd be nice to offer a wider range of Espruino devices (for instance one with an LCD/OLED), but I just can't afford to order 1500 each of all of them, which is what I often need to make something viable with a contract manufacturer. It feels like the solution is to make the boards locally in smaller quantities. Otherwise another option is for me to sell all the parts in an unsoldered kit - but the pitch on the nRF52 module is fine enough that I think it could be tricky for a lot of people... You really need a temperature controlled hot air gun to do it nicely. |
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Posted at 2017-09-07 by Adam79 A very small javascript BLE board with only the basics is exactly what I've been looking for. I'd agree self soldering something that small would be a put off for some, including me. I've already tried with a RN4020 had 75% success rate. Surprised a third party couldn't create these at a competitive price, have you tried http://ragworm.eu/ ? Not used them myself, but seem to be all about open hardware and in the same country. |
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Posted at 2017-09-07 by @gfwilliams I'll have a bit more of a look at it... The nRF52 looks to be about the same pitch as that RN4020 so you're in for similar levels of pain :) I did use Ragworm for some prototype PCBs in the past and found them to be a bit on the pricey side, but the assembly is new to me - it might be different. I'll have a bit more of a look around. My issue really is the volumes - to make it cost effective for a CM to set up their machines I have to get 1000 or so boards made, which is a big investment each time I need to restock. As an example I'm getting some Espruino-powered badges made for a JS conference at the moment (in the UK) - it's costing me at least £4 a badge to make 250 badges - just for (partial) assembly... I'm still putting through-hole bits on myself! It means it's very hard to justify doing smaller production runs (like badges or custom sensors) which might otherwise be quite a good way to grow the business. If I was selling more expensive things then it wouldn't be such an issue outsourcing the manufacture - but at least it seems to me that there's a lot of price pressure on the kind of things I'm selling at the moment. I've just been looking around at a lot of the smaller Open Hardware companies that seem to have done well - Adafruit, Sparkfun, Olimex, Pimoroni, Pololu, Seeed, etc and they all seem to be doing the same thing - basically being very vertically integrated - manufacturing and selling the devices themselves. |
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Posted at 2017-09-08 by Adam79 How do companies like Adafruit and Sparkfun buy from you ? To they commit to 100, 200 ? Is it sale or return ? |
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Posted at 2017-09-08 by @gfwilliams They actually buy up front. If you look at the bottom of http://www.espruino.com/Order there are some rates for purchases in larger quantities, and they just work off those. I started off doing sale or return, but quite quickly it got popular enough that I didn't have to. Adafruit are particularly good at keeping their markup low, and I think they make more money off extra stuff sold along with the boards. However some other companies put large markups on the sale price - to the point where some might be making maybe 3x more money off each device sold than I am! |
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Posted at 2017-09-08 by Adam79 Can you get a commitment from these companies before getting the new boards made ? Selling a cheaper board bundling with other stuff they provide might be appealing. |
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Posted at 2017-09-08 by @gfwilliams That's a good idea actually - Adafruit have tended not to go for initial orders of my stuff much past 50 boards if I recall, but I might be able to get a few more companies to do something similar. It could be a good way of getting started without all the stress of a KickStarter. It still brings up the stock issue - even if I get enough for an initial batch, at some point I'll still have to fork out for another 1000 or so, but at least it gets me started. I guess another option is to rebrand someone else's board. If one of the sellers on Alibaba/similar did a decent 0.1" pitch nRF52 board then I could just buy those and flash them with the Espruino bootloader and firmware. I'd considered this with the nRF5x based smartwatches, but I believe the minimum order they gave me for custom firmware was 5000, which is a bit past what I could manage! |
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Posted at 2017-10-10 by jonreid I could be interested in a nRF52 board with Espruino preloaded. Our current wireless logging solution is made up of two devices. The first is a battery powered Arduino that broadcasts two temperatures regularly, using a nrf24L01. The second device has a Pico/SIM800/nrf24L01/LCD/EEPROM. I am thinking that it could be a nicer solution to have both devices nrf52 based as the BLE comms would be useful for some additional features we wish to add. My main unknown is whether all the software will fit/run in the nrf52 ? The current software runs with 800 blocks free mem on the Pico, using standard Save and no Pretokenise. Does Espruino support using the nrf52 flash for writing general logging data ? I know that its endurance is only 10000 writes but there is lots of it so that should not be an issue for me. |
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Posted at 2017-10-10 by @allObjects
@jonreid, did y0u consider to put your software into modules, minified, and store them as functions with the option to run from flash? What is the amount of data in the log until it is downloaded and cleared? |
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Posted at 2017-10-10 by user82163 Yes run from flash would save a bunch of RAM so definitely an option. My application currently writes 8bytes every 2 mins, (5760 bytes per day). Normally data is uploaded every 30 mins, but I need to be able to keep up to around 10 days worth for backup purposes. |
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Posted at 2017-10-10 by @gfwilliams @jonreid Great! So you'd be interested in something on a 0.1" pitch (rather than just a pre-programmed MDBT42Q module). I think you'd be fine on code-size. Not having nRF24 or EEPROM code will save some space, and there's still some space free to increase the variable count on nRF52 substantially as both it and the Pico have 64k RAM. Hopefully 1v95 will have that increased.
It does, yes - using the standard Espruino Actually the Pico has an undocumented 128kB (!) page right at the end of memory that you could look at using instead of EEPROM if you needed? |
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Posted at 2017-10-10 by jonreid A 0.1 pitch board could be useful, depends how we end up making it. What is involved in getting Espruino onto a MDBT42Q module? If we go that way we could always become a Patreon to get ongoing support? I did not use the extra flash page on the Pico as I was saving for saving remote code updates. If it was broken into several pages it would have been ideal. |
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Posted at 2017-10-10 by @gfwilliams
You have to connect to it with an SWD debugger/flasher like the NRF52832DK board (it's just 2 wires + power). Just last week I got a programming harness made so I can actually send you pre-programmed MDBT42Q modules now.
Yes, tell me about it. I don't know why ST did that :) |
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Posted at 2017-10-10 by Adam79 Photos of your programming harness @gordon ? Its seems you're further down the line getting something released ? |
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Posted at 2017-10-10 by @gfwilliams Sure - see below. It looks a bit basic, but it seems to work well (although I ought to do a new one with a more shallow angle on the pins as it requires a tiny bit of fiddling to get the module in). I tried making one with a proper frame where the pogo pins pressed down onto the back of the board, but it's too hard to get them to align reliably. By having the pins come in from the side the castellations help to locate them properly.Attachments: |
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Posted at 2017-11-22 by tbd @gordon what about https://www.mikroe.com/mikrobus/ ?
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Posted at 2017-11-22 by @gfwilliams I'm a bit iffy about going for something where shields are only available from one particular manufacturer - same for things like the Adafruit Feather really. Stuff like Arduino, Arduino Nano or Raspberry Pi have loads of breakout boards from lots of different manufacturers (often at very low prices) so I think would be preferable. There must be others though? |
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Posted at 2017-11-23 by Spocki My heart says Puck.js++ (circular pcb) but my brain says go rectangular. In that domain i would like to see something like Teensy 3.2. Lots of addons and shields, ie on Tindie. |
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Posted at 2017-11-23 by tbd also a Puck.js Lite would be nice – Espruino on a nRF52810, small factor, some pins for sensors in $5 range |
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Posted at 2017-11-23 by @gfwilliams
Haha. Yes. That would be nice. It's not going to happen any time soon though I'm afraid - even selling at cost I wouldn't hit that :) @spocki yes - I'd like to do something else that fits in the same Puck.js molds too, but I know what you mean. It's hard to cram enough extra worthwhile stuff on there at the moment. Teensy looks like an interesting form factor... Do you think that more breakouts are available for Teensy 3.2 than for the Arduino Nano? |
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Posted at 2017-11-23 by tbd for $5 range I compared with https://minew.en.alibaba.com/product/60606212990-802524400/Factory_Direct_Sale_Anti_losting_Tracker.html with nRF51822, buzzer, on/off button that is $3 at 1000 units (that was 2 years ago) I like the http://www.m5stack.com/ form factor - small, 320x240 LCD, stackable, easy to prototype. another cheap round design ESP32 solution – https://www.tindie.com/products/Sandeep_ee/hornbill-esp32-minima/ just brainstorming around |
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Posted at 2017-11-23 by @gfwilliams Honestly I don't know how they manage that - because just the bare Raytac bluetooth module costs me ~$4, without anything else. I did contact Minewtech about a very slightly custom beacon (not even using a custom PCB) before I launched Puck.js and I was quoted around $15 at 1000-off I believe, for an nRF51 beacon. I think it's just the sheer quantity they make them in. |
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Posted at 2017-11-23 by tbd maybe try to negotiate with them again. or sell more Puck.js 😋 |
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Posted at 2017-12-01 by vb Try to order boards from https://item.taobao.com/item.htm?spm=a312a.7700824.w4023-16080569721.11.6e5efbbasB39iB&id=532630623264 |
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Posted at 2018-02-14 by PaddeK Just as a update, Particle is in a presale for their nrf52840 based boards. |
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Posted at 2018-02-15 by @gfwilliams Interesting - thanks! I am planning on something but because I'm using BLE modules, the BLE module supplier has to wait until they get Nordic's chips before they can make the modules, so it may be a month or so after other boards. They tell me they got stung before when they produced pre-production modules and then Nordic modified the production chip, so this time they're only making modules available when they have production silicon. That was supposed to be this month, but Nordic's release date for the nrf52840 keeps getting pushed back. On the plus side, the first prototype panel of LCD boards came off the production line at Pimoroni yesterday. It's a shame they don't have the new chip, but hopefully they'll still be pretty popular.Attachments: |
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Posted at 2018-02-21 by Adam79 Did I miss a post about these new boards ? @gordon whats the news ? |
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Posted at 2018-02-21 by @gfwilliams These things are basically the Espruino Nodeconf badge, but with an Arduino footprint on them and a voltage regulator (so Bluetooth and a 128x64 LCD). I'm pretty excited about them, especially given you can just push in bargain priced GSM, WiFi, Ethernet shields and have them work. I'm gearing up to do a first batch of 500 which should be ready by April. I've decided not to KickStarter this time, but will just see what publicity I can get. |
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Posted at 2018-02-21 by @gfwilliams If anyone is interested in updates, please fill in your email at this link and I'll let you know when it's on sale: http://www.espruino.com/Pixl.js |
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Posted at 2018-06-27 by @gfwilliams Ok, Pixl.js has now been available for a while However there's now another board available - a cheaper Bluetooth LE dev board - the one that @adam79 originally spotted in the YouTube video! Attachments: |
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Posted at 2017-09-06 by Adam79
@gordon just watched your new silk screen video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWuIbHIiJ6k), was that a sneak preview of you next hardware release ? tiny board + nRF52832 + espruino ?
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