Data Collection Terminal

Added pictures of the actual enclosure and its membrane keyboard overlay.

Looks quite professional (though unfortunately a bit dated),  the insides are another story, yes its all smoke and mirrors folks,  there is a badly fitting circuit board with most of the major components squashed in all a bit of a squeeze but hopefully nothing that cannot be fixed by a few design changes on the next board in a few weeks time. 

All good marketing though and it is good enough to show you guys and my prospective clients how it will look and how much it will weigh when it's finished.

The plan is that this will probably end up as the version 1 system, I would still like to try and do a version 2 with a proper colour touchscreen and laser scanner as originally envisaged (especially laser scanner). That plan fizzled out when I saw how badly the TFT behaved in direct sunlight and how much more difficult the case would have been to make to get all the components in, I've since seen some expensive 2.8" transflective screens but I'm not too sure of availability and the manual was not available even from the supplier

The other major thing to say is that the colour/touchscreen did not really add anything that this unit can do except a bit of kudos and of course looking much better.

I guess if you've got to here you've probably already checked out the trials and tribulations, starts and stops of the project to date on my web site and know I've made and discarded several design ideas to get where I am. I must say to date most (if not all) the real problems have been to do with making or buying a suitable enclosure and mechanics is something I do really bad, just ask my chickens who have to live in the house I built for them!

There are two reasons for putting this up on hack-a-day

1. It will give me the kick I need to find the spare time to get a move on with the project. Its been done to date in between other paid projects, this is still the case but one of my clients has seen the blog and is really keen to trial a couple of prototypes before the year end.

2. There are lots of awesome people out there who can give me feedback and or spot mistakes and assumptions I have not, they may also give me ideas to improve the design and or want to get involved in some way

There is a third reason (the selfish one) and that is I would really like to go up in a rocket, but I'm not counting my eggs for that to happen as it really is a bit niche project. and there are some real awesome ones on the list.

As I have not updated my blog for a month I can give you the news that I now have 50 enclosures with custom keypad and I've basically done all the testing except for deciding which WiFi module to use, this means I will actually be able to finalise the PCB once this testing is done. the testing is basically checking the power usage and coverage of the module, I know the RN-131 works, but it is $36 and the USR one I'm looking at is $12, this is the difference between a $120 BOM and a $100 BOM so it is worth looking in to. I will add some more pictures once I put together some dummy hardware in a few days.

Please feel free to look at the concept, what I've done and where I'm at and let me know if you have any constructive feedback good or bad