I thought I’d take use of this new space to do some journal writing about the day-to-day here in the LZX lab as we enter our sprint towards the release of the Orion Series modules.
Right now amidst a hectic production schedule with restocks and Vidiot, @eyesnoface , Ed and I are working on the first rev of the production boards for Memory Palace. This is the point in which we take what we’ve been doing with various prototypes and development boards, and implement the full vision for the first time. We need to be production ready by September, and we want to make sure there’s time for a couple revisions of the circuit boards if need be, without effecting the schedule.
Photo by Zach Michels, who we were happy to receive a visit from on Monday.
It’s an especially tedious phase of module design and production, as not only do we need to design the circuit boards and frontpanel CAD files, but every part in the assembly needs at least one reliable source/supplier, and all the variables of stocking levels, lead times, and costing can quickly become dizzying. This is one reason we like to do product series – they share a lot of the same parts, and some of the liability and cost is spread across several products rather than one. Without this strategy it would be difficult to make it all work!
The first module in a series, with lots of new parts and circuitry, is always the most work. In this case that’s Memory Palace. The assembly has three PCBs – Jonah is working on the main control PCB while I work on the display and interface PCBs. Here are some quick renders of where I’m at with the first two boards.
We’ve still got some polishing and review to do but I am very happy with how it’s all coming together at this stage. It looks like we’ll be ordering boards to build up this first revision by the end of this week. Hopefully it will be the units we show at KnobCon!
@dave has been polishing the frontpanel silkscreen graphics and also working on pixel art UI graphics for the display. We’ll be able to show you some of that next week.
Feel free to ask questions and be part of this with us!
Over and out,
Lars
