2017.04.29: I think I fried my first digit This is a running log of my postmortem. Hooked up all flex circuits, and powered on. Ran rollcall, unaware of a problem. Strange... the LEDs didn't come up as they should have... IMU
2017.02.18: r2 PCBs have arrived The r2 hardware arrived Friday. Had CPLD images flashed by Saturday. I'm crazy-busy writing enough firmware for the ESP32 to test it. Until then, photos... Dorsal surface on the left, ventral on the
2017.01.07: Flex circuits have all arrived Imma be quick. Need to get back to software. The distal node The intermediate node The proximal node, which also contains the digit's LED And the rear of the proximal node The complete
2017.01.05: Flex circuits, and a release choice Flex circuits (metacarpals) After 1.5 years, the digit design is complete, and is real hardware on my desk. This was easily the hardest (and most expensive) part of the project. The metacarpals
2016.12.14: Digit update The metacarpals flex was the first of the two pieces to wind up in my hands. The digit flexes should follow behind shortly. Rule 32 (Pics or it didn't happen) Here is a
2016.10.19: Final digit layout Fabricator is ready to roll with the flex circuits, after a looooong game of ping-pong and a few re-work cycles. Getting things right in such tight constraints was not a trivial task. And
2016.09.25: The hard problems in IoT What follows is a post I wrote back in April for my co-workers who are tasked with sales and product concerns. I am posting it because it still applies to our present situation
2016.07.04: CPLD is ready-to-rock Where things stand today As of today, the CPLD is a solved-problem. All the design goals detailed in my prior post are satisfied and have been tested up-to ~5MHz input clock. The CPLD
Design Choices: CPLD This is the third post in a series of posts detailing the rationale for design choices in our motion capture glove. I will try and anticipate questions that informed users will ask. This
Completed r1 flex PCB design Digitabulum r1 has a much improved interconnect strategy. This is a single digit. See that dark purple circle in the middle of the image? That's the footprint of a US dime. Intent: Stackup
2016.02.10: Manuvr update! Us personally We've had a busy January. The entire Manuvr team is now in the San Francisco Bay area. Josh and I are now working full-time on Manuvr and related technologies for a
Major firmware overhaul Threading issues and uncertainties are resolved. Callgrind is so helpful.... In lieu of a major update tonight, a teaser: ---Ian
Manuvr Electron Client It's been brewing for awhile now. It's time to talk a bit about Manuvr Host Bridge (MHB). It isn't ready for use yet, but there is a substantial amount complete and worth describing.
Placing the USB port Recall from the last post that the USB port wasn't able to be automatically placed on r1 due to a mistake I made in the PCB boundary. This is a log of the
Populated r1 PCBs have arrived October has been a busy month for hardware... Clockwise from the US quarter... The chosen battery for r1. The r1 debug harnesses. The three test boards for the power subsystem on the main
Spin-off hardware (Power subsystems) In the course of building Digitabulum, I've designed several PCBs for atomic subsystems that can be easily re-purposed. This post is about the power subsystem. There are two blocks: The regulator/charging/sensing
r1 raw PCBs have arrived We've not been making many posts the past two months. We've been hard at work on r1 and MHB (Manuvr Host Bridge). But today is special. We got the first run of PCBs
Documentation Available data from the glove, and more documentation Here is some of the public doc we've put together for selecting the data that your application wants. We will be releasing doc in waves like this until we carve out a dedicated
Design choices: Digits, costs, and good tools This is the second post in a series of posts detailing the rationale for design choices in our motion capture glove. I will try and anticipate questions that informed users will ask. But
Hardware First r1 renders Well... that came out exactly as planned. These aren't final. There will be tweaks and cleanup. But I think the essence is clear. We are still having internal discussions about many of the
Hardware Expansion port pinouts This will eventually become part of the user's manual, or be put in a documentation folder someplace. But for now, you can see it on the blog. :-) The identities of the pins
Design choices: Sensors This is the first post in a series of posts detailing the rationale for design choices in our motion capture glove. I will try and anticipate questions that informed users will ask. This
C++ C++ Style choices (notes) This post is aimed at programmers-in-general, and covers some general stylistic perspectives. The vehicle is C++, but the stylistic issues at hand are experienced by programmers in basically every language of which I'm
C++ Data structures (Priority queues) This will be an examination of one of the two key data structures in ManuvrOS: The Priority Queue. Additionally, this particular priority queue is... implemented by way of a linked list a template
Hardware Hardware revision 1 teaser Photos of r0 might make this discussion easier to follow. I've spent lots of time the past few months designing r1. There is still some auditing and routing to do, but at this
