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Update #1 for Knit : Industrial strength low-cost WiFi

A project log for Makerville Knit

Knit is a breakout board to build WiFi enabled things.

anuj-deshpandeAnuj Deshpande 04/21/2016 at 09:390 Comments

Namaste all

This is Anuj from the Knit team and I thought I'd say hi to everyone who subscribed to the mailing list/followed the project on a social network.

Right now, we are towards the end of our prototyping phase. I thought it would be a good idea to share some of the hardware features and get some feedback from fellow devs.

Breadboard compatibility

The width is such that it makes 1 column of pins available on either side of the Knit when it is mounted on a breadboard. We understand that one pin is barely anything but we were limited by the module width.

Protruding module for better range

We have exposed the PCB antenna of the module such that it hangs over the edge like Stallone from Cliffhanger. Although this trend is quite common, it is not universal.

LEDs

We have a power LED which is not controlled by the microcontroller, and a user LED which is linked to a GPIO. This GPIO is also exposed on the pin headers and one can desolder the resistance next to the LED if they require the pin for their interfaces.

Buttons

We have a reset button tied directly to the RESETn pin on the controller. Another button is linked to the boot pins and can be used to choose the boot option (UART boot or regular). This second button also acts like a user button as the boot pins are also muxed as GPIOs. So you can potentially use these pins as part of your application but you will have to ensure that no one presses them when they hit reset.
(The photo of the prototype on that we have has 3 buttons, but we have dropped one of them now)

tail -f /about/us

The team behind Knit is 2 people, Rohit and myself. Of course we depend on the software made available by Marvell's IoT team and are grateful for all their efforts and support.

Rohit is a super geek. You can get stuck in a conversation with him that can start with electric cars (he built a solar powered one in his college days) and end with him talking about his 40W Japanese solder gun. If you happen to have a day or two free, you should hear him talk about how he restored that 70's capacitive speaker made in UK (he is excessively proud of it).

When not designing projects using KiCad, he can be found learning his new Ukulele.

You can follow him on twitter or instagram

- Anuj

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