Last week was a pretty big week -- I put in the full production order of 100 circuit boards to MacroFab!!!

Test Boards

This year I'm using MacroFab to do the manufacturing of the boards. This is a new PCB manufacturing and assembly company and I was a little apprehensive; so about 3 weeks ago I ordered a single test board. It was delivered right on time and was simply perfect.

Isn't it pretty!

After running it through a series of tests, all functions appeared to be working. Time to put in the production order...almost.

Sensitivity Training

I had been building a series of boards by hand and by the time the test board came in, it was time for more full-scale testing. The great news is the touch sensors still seem to be working well! The less great news is that sometimes they are a bit over sensitive.

After tweaking a bunch of variables, it seemed that reducing the sampling capacitor from 22nF to 10nF makes tuning the sensitivity much easier.

Production Order

Ideally, at this point, I would have time to test the boards with the new capacitors and make sure this is a solid option. Unfortunately, with Burning Man about a month and a half way, I need to get the order in. So I checked everything I could and at about 3am held my breath, closed my eyes, pressed the order button and went to bed.

So in about 3 weeks I should have about 100 boards at my door step. If everything goes well, we'll have a full-size working dance floor and an awesome party in the desert.

Until then, more manually assembled boards and testing.

Wish me luck!