first quarter of the year is over and what happened so

getting better with my circuit design and down to 0603 components. Sadly we got beaten by someone else to the market and I'm trying now to come up with some new ideas

managed to replace the screen on our iDrop 2, gladly it's now so old that new screens are literally 12$ a drop, so it's not that big of a deal anymore

basil is still trying to get away with being a puppy, never mind that he just turned 3. Rosie was not willing to have her picture posted. Apparently she is becoming a bit self conscious about her weight these days...

managed to spend a couple of days at my in-laws cabin

learned to make tuna tartar, which is rather delicious

our latest cider is finally ready for consumption, only took about 4 month for it to become clear

starting to become spring in our backyard

our 3 year old roomba, got some needed help in form of a little roomba who now mop's our floors once a day

Christmas Break and playing with our new Nikon D7000

Just a couple of pictures taken during our christmas break, of christmas trees, christmas dinner, puppies and the traditional feuerzangen bowle.

German Christmas Pyramid

Christmas dinner appetizer

Wifey and me + a basil bee

things left by santa and highly appreciated by us

metaxa, while reading in front of the tree

the mentioned tree

basil taking over the couch yet again

traditional feuerzangen bowle

PCB prototyping research...

over the last month we spend an ungodly amount of time trying to figure out how to make double sided PCB's in a decent speed at home...

Milling:

1. CNC

• works great for through hole soldering
• not so good for small SMD connectors and it was just to much hit and miss
• 2 working boards out of 30 attempted are not acceptable, 0805 and SOT-23 package size mostly with some JST-PH 6 connectors
• breaking to many mill bit's

Toner Transfer Method:

1. H2O2 + CH3COOH etching

• 1h in the tank -> 2 bubbles
• 24h later, still not done
• problem are these 3% H2O2 solutions you can get locally

2. HCL + H2O2

• about 3 hours a board, but this causes some serious under cutting and a lot of destroyed traces.
• again 16.5% HCL is the strongest I can locally get
• again 3% H2O2 is the main culprit for super slow etching speed
• lot's of nasty fumes, causing rust on stuff around it, not good in a machine shop
• but might be the only way right now

3. FeCL2

• not tested yet, since rather messy and expensive

Combination of Toner Transfer and Milling

The really big advantage of the CNC is right now that it will drill all our VIAS and mounting holes for sockets, etc. Which makes it lot easier and it's rather fast. I do wish that I could find a decent free G-CODE optimizer

mixit - slow progress

We keep making progress with our little MixIt, there is still not much to see. But a lot of work is going on and we are sure to make our deadline.

as you can see it's missing a base and a faceplate

so we ordered a CNC as a KIT and started assembling it

it's mostly assembled, but still waiting for the spindle controller and tinyg to arrive

So last week we started assembling the order CNC router, to help us create a nice looking face plate. Sadly our 3D printer was not really up for the task and things kept warping constantly.

We are still waiting for a handful of parts, but hopefully by the end of this weekend everything arrived and is assembled. We can start milling the faceplate and move on the fabricated the prototype circuit boards.

Busy, Busy life

So the last weeks have been a touch stressful or in other words, my wife forbid me last weekend to touch a pc or think about anything related to:

• cnc research
• cad drawing
• pcb design
• electronics
• programming
• 3D printing
• general work
• c++
• swift
• soldering smd parts
• some other things

And to just grab a book, some beers and relax.

Thinking about my workload, yeah I overdid it a little bit, between working during the day at the lab and working at night on Kickstarter project, I barley slept more than 2-3 hours on average since we have come back from germany. 

I guess I should take a break.

Anyway current accomplishments:

• bought a 3D printer and using it for 'rapid' low cost prototyping
• rediscovered my CAD skills and designing parts. Yay for free cad, I do would love to have solid works and better CNC/3D Printer integration
• researched and ordered a CNC router, which we will spend the next couple of days assembling. Thinking about machining parts out of acrylic and aluminium to make things look oh so pretty
• assembled a prototype more or less, still need's finishing touches
• wrote a partial iPhone application, it's boring but does the job
• assembled a working and awesome team to actually build this thing
• spend tens of hours of soldering and starting to order SMD parts for the next step, cutting PCB's on the CNC and SMD soldering
• researched hot air rework stations and reflow ovens.
• wrote the firmware

And last but not least, organized an amazing 10 year anniversary party with my wifey. Well she organized everything and I was brewing 3 amazing beers.

Now how to mill acrylic and where to get a 12V DC Motor with enough torque to crush ice. We are really trying to get away for 120V AC.

Next weekend, we will finish up the prototype housing and wrap it in aluminium with a nice scotch brite finish. Looking forward to playing with the laser table.

A way overdo post

So for some reasons I haven't managed to blog here in the last 8 months.

And I have no real valid excuse, except:

• travelling
• fixing the house
• brewing to much beer
• drinking to much beer
• and working on my first kick-starter project

Our project:

As people know, I have been doing software development since a very long time and got interested in microchip programming a couple of years ago and have been wondering what I can build, which doesn't already exist.

Well as soon as the kickstarter project goes online and I got the ok from the last crucial Team members, mostly our CAD guy, I will post he some more product updates and pictures during the build.

 If we do not find our CAD guy, I guess I have to rediscover my CAD and 3D Modeling skills, when I was 15.

Final christmas gift arrived

A couple of days ago, our final christmas gift from my parents arrived and is now looking for the perfect spot in the house.

A classic german christmas pyramid, which you can't really find in the states and so it was stuck in 'traffic' for close of a month now.

Needless to say, once 'sober january' is over, we have to make some Feuerzangen bowle.

my luck with car's continues...

So now it's the 2nd time that our new car is at the dealer for service, due to an check engine light. And there latest statement was:

It will be here for an undefined amount of time, since we have no idea what's wrong with it.

This was last thursday and now it's wednesday and not a single beep except 'we are talking to Porsche Germany, since we are out of ideas'

I really hope it doesn't turn into a buy back, since frankly we would loose at least 4k$ during this process and I really don't want to start shopping yet again.

On the other hand, they gave as a 2014 Porsche Cayman loaner car, with a PDK transmission and I'm really happy that we decided to buy the convertible instead of the coupe as well as the manual transmission instead of the PDK (which is in all respect an amazing transmission, but just doesn't feel right and is rather boring)

our rental coupe on the left, classic 911 Targa on the right

a slightly different christmas gift

After talking more or less none stop of a car over the last 3 years, watching 18 seasons of top gear and researching every possible fact, we bought us a 981 Porsche Boxster a couple of weeks ago as christmas gift (for the next dozen of years or so)

The jeep is back in the shop..

Due to an issue with the AC system and a couple of annoying rattles in the dashboard, the jeep is back at the dealer and getting fixed/resolved.

Meaning I'm getting another toy as loaner car. So that I keep getting to work.

This time we got a 2013 Toyota Tundra/Crew Cab to play with, which reminded me how much I miss driving a pickup truck and how happy I am that I do not have to pay this gigantic gas bill anymore.

we got about 12.5mgp during the 3 days of driving...

as size comparison, a 5 door A3 parked next to it. Nose to nose.

But I really start to appreciate the service of a dealer, if you buy a new car from him. It's just makes your life a lot easier, when something goes wrong.

First piece of acceptable furniture is finished.

Over the last couple of weeks, I was working on a little side table as prototype for our planned living room furniture.

already under heavy use...

little necklace hanger for my wife, made from left over bloodwood

finally enough tomato for some food

Jeep is turning 1 and promptly in the shop...

So our 2013 grand cherokee, pretty much turned 1 year old with 12k miles and the check engine light goes on and off to the dealer it goes to get it fixed.

What do we get as a loaner? A small little chrysler c200 convertible, which is a bit limiting for my frame and kinda tight. But it's nice to have a convertible to take advantage of the sunny days right now and to demo, if we really want to buy a convertible as next car.

But it definitely does not compare to the porsche 987s boxster with test drove for my 30ths birthday.

we got a couch and now we need end tables

recently we got our new couch and this basically means that we now need some end tables for it, since our existing ones neither match or look that great and they are getting a bit old.

At the same time our finacial situation also improved a little bit, which gave me the opportunity to buy some nice wood and build them myself. Since mahogany is quite expensive, we decide to build a small side table first. And if all works out, we will create a big one afterwards. If not we just buy some cheap poplar and stain it mahogany colored...

69$ of wood, it's not a lot, but enough for a single end table, which sells for the mid to high 300$

everything cut to size, sadly not precise 90 degree angles, since I still don't have a jointer

shaping the legs, I want that they all have a slopped angle 2" from the top

about 3/4 of an inch to remove with my fore plane, while trying to keep the correct slope

after roughing out the shape with the bandsaw, it time to finetune it with the rasps.

about 70% complete, just need to add the bottom shelf, sand it and apply a french finish.

time to cleanup the mess

now no internet for the next 4-7 days...

Back from camping and finally we got a couch...

Two weekends ago we took our little summer trip and went camping for a couple of days. Nothing big, just 3 days of relaxing and doing nothing, but reading 'The legend of Drizzt' or in other words, the Forgotten Realms series, which spanned several of my favorite computer games of all times. I'm actually playing baldurs gate again, when I can't sleep. But this is another topic all together.

the area around Black Butte Lake

making some dinner

our little family, just being happy

Since we have been going camping rather regularity over the last 2+ years now and average between 3-4 trips a year. We are actually starting to talk about buying a little Camping trailer to have some more comfort, like a shower and more space for all our stuff. Traveling with 2 dogs, turns out to require a lot of space and once kids come around, there is no way we can do this with the Jeep alone. But this is to be decided in a couple of years and just one of our crazy ideas. After all we still have to finish up our house.

Speaking off, we finally managed to decide on a couch for the living room and now just need a fitting table or ottoman to go with it.

Also we finally have an entertainment center, which turned out to be a compromise between buying one and me reinforcing the frame and cutting it out to support the weight of our system.

first couch I bought in my live...

wide angle lenses make our house look huge...

Waiting for gras to grow...

after we finished tilling, leveling and seeding our right side of the lawn, we are now literally waiting for grass to grow. It should be all nice in green in 6-8 weeks from now.

So now we are focussing on the left side and improving the look of our planters.

slowly adding red mulch to the planters, to improve their look

We are also making progress with our little vegetable garden and hope to harvest some more things soon.

bell peppers are finally showing up

so do the cayennetta peppers

as our tomatoes. Well frankly we going to have hundreds of tomatoes in 3-4 weeks.

And start planning our winter garten and organizing some things, to make space for more veggies boxes...

next step done...

now that everything is tilled, it was time to put a little temporary fencing into place. So that the pups don't mess up the grass we plan to put down sometimes next week.

temporary fence is build and up. Cheapest wood construction possible and I just hope it lasts 6-8 weeks

the dogs are getting older, maybe calmer?

now that the dogs are getting a bit older and start to listen, sometimes even successfully we decided it's time to replace the sad excuse for 'grass' with a new coat of grass.

Little did I know how much work this is going to entail. And so this is the first step in my thirteen step program, at least it feels like it.

tilling the right side of the yard (next year we do the left, yay...)

step 1 - tilling the yard

it was only 102F/38C this day, so not to bad for living around the central valley.

next step would be to till it all over again and again and than flatten it...