One thing I've noticed that is a problem is that the firmware/software teams are often waiting for hardware to work on things. While this can be helped a bit by developing test solutions that don't require hardware, at some point the firmware will have to get uploaded to the physical hardware.

Someone (could be from the hardware team, or from the software team) should set up bare boards for every generation. That is, boards with the bare minimum to upload firmware onto. These boards don't need to include sensors but should include the microcontroller and whatever power systems are required to power the microcontroller. These boards don't need to be able to be powered by batteries, but their power systems should support the power requirements of the microcontroller that is onboard.

As a bonus, if it's possible to add an XBee to these boards, that would be great.

It's important to have these boards because of two reasons:

• It can be difficult sometimes to nail down the right configuration for uploading, having bare boards really early on would help folks be able to do testing with this
• These boards serve as a control - if we know firmware is able to be uploaded to these boards, there is likely a hardware issue on the full board

Implementation

As far as implementation goes - there are a couple of options:

• breadboard
• soldered breadboard (like this: https://www.amazon.com/ElectroCookie-Solderable-Breadboard-Electronics-Gold-Plated/dp/B07YBYZCTN/ref=sr_1_9?dchild=1&keywords=solderable+breadboard&qid=1617117364&sr=8-9)
• fabbed pcb

A regular breadboard might be the quickest option, but connections may come loose pretty easily. I suggest prototyping with the breadboard first, and then copying the design onto a soldered breadboard so that it's a little more robust.

I suggest going with the soldered pcb first, because it can take a while to have the fabbed pcb come back from production.

Leaving them connected to the lab server (or another machine)

Once these boards are created, they could be left permanently attached to the lab server, or another machine. This way, they can be easily shared among team members for testing, simply by just using the lab server as a development machine. You just need to SSH into the machine, compile and upload. This can be done remotely as well by anyone who needs to do testing.

Who would be responsible for this

I think this is something the hardware teams should deliver, especially since there is often some time waiting for boards to come back from fabrication. I would talk with the leadership team to make this a priority for every team so that it can be properly scheduled in as a deliverable for every semester.

There should definitely be some help from the firmware team during the process to verify that the bare boards are working.

Contributing authors:

Created by kluong on 2021/03/30 15:21.