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• Web server, signalk based architecture and other software progress

  Thomas Sarlandie • 06/19/2017 at 03:42 • 0 comments

  I have been making tons of progress on the software side. It's all in the 'develop' branch and I encourage the brave amongst you to give it a try. If you are thinking of adding features to KBox, you definitely need to do it on this branch.

  Just a quick overview:
  - Complete SignalK based architecture, which means that every NMEA, NMEA2000 messages and every piece of data from the sensors gets first converted into SignalK before being re-converted into some output format (NMEA, NMEA2000, SignalK, etc)

  - Integrated webserver

  - Websocket support (will support SignalK websocket soon)

  - NMEA to NMEA2000 conversions (currently only GPRMC but more to come - let me know what you need on your boat)
  - etc.

• Tales of KBox manufacturing

  Thomas Sarlandie • 06/05/2017 at 03:31 • 0 comments

  Just a few weeks ago, I ran into Chris Gammell at Maker Faire Bay Area. We talked about KBox and the joy of taking a project from prototyping to manufacturing in small quantities. I have made a lot of progress since my presentation at HDDG a year ago and had a lot of fun catching up with Chris.

  He thought a few more people would enjoy the content of our discussion and turned it into a blog post and a video.

  
  

  If you are interested in KBox, curious how it gets manufactured and how it is being priced, there is a lot to learn in this video! Thanks Chris!
  
  

• Presentation at HDDG San Francisco

  Thomas Sarlandie • 06/05/2017 at 03:24 • 0 comments

  (This update is way overdue, sorry!)

  In June 2016, at HDDG #14, I presented KBox and gave a lot more details about the project design, decisions I made along the way and the architecture of the hardware.

  If you are interested in KBox, you will definitely enjoy this presentation!

  Slides and videos are available here.
  

• First five KBox ready to leave!

  Thomas Sarlandie • 06/03/2016 at 07:05 • 0 comments

  Hey!

  A big thanks to everyone who reached out to ask questions,

  share their boat problems or just show interest. I believe I have

  reached back to everyone now, if not, please ping me again.

  Here is a picture of the first 5 complete KBox. The boards are the one I received from PCBng.org a few weeks back.

  Those five boards will go to people who contacted me and first expressed interest. I do ask that you make sure that you are able to recompile the firmware before I send you a board. If you cannot update KBox, it will be very quickly obsolete ;) I have created a [Developer Setup page on the wiki](https://github.com/sarfata/kbox-firmware/wiki/Developer-Setup) with instructions for Linux, Mac OS and Windows.

  As promised KBox will ship in a waterproof enclosure (or at least water resistant, I do not recommend installing it outside!). This is what it looks on my boat with the NMEA2000 connected and my two batteries:

  So what happened since last month??
  

  It took a while to transform the pcbng boards into fully working KBox and I am very sorry about that. Here are some of the issues I ran into:

  - The "Running Light" led on the bottom left corner was flipped on all the boards and I had to rework it. It's a very small (0603) SMD and for 50% of the boards, I destroyed it in the process and had to get a new one.

  - The ESP8266 modules (the one that provide WiFi) had to be hand-soldered on all the boards

  - The colorful leds had to be hand-soldered on all the boards, they are a pain to solder because they are very fragile and can stop working if heated too much...

  - Some of the SDCard connectors had to be reworked

  - Hand soldered two capacitors, the 32khz crystal, the big screw terminal and a few other things

  Last but not least, I had to test each board to make sure everything worked on it. To do this, I wrote a new firmware image called "manufacturing firmware" which runs through some automated tests. This is what it looks like when I am testing a board:

  In testing mode, there is one NMEA2000 connection to a real NMEA2000 device to make sure receiving and sending packets work, the first nmea output is connected to the second input and the second output to the first input. The test then runs automatically and I just have to confirm that the LEDs turn on, that the button works, etc. I also apply voltages to the analog converters to confirm they work and also test the accelerometer. The code for this special firmware is [on GitHub of course](https://github.com/sarfata/kbox-firmware/pull/4).

  Next steps
  

  Once I have shipped these first 5 boards, I will order another round of board. If you are interested, [use the form](http://goo.gl/forms/y78AeACvyr) or email me.

  Finally as a little bonus, here are three boards (that was my USB cables limit) showing the two most recent KBox screens: voltage monitoring and general stats:

  That's it for today! Thanks for your interest in the project.

  thomas
  

• Boards received from PCBng.org

  Thomas Sarlandie • 06/03/2016 at 07:03 • 0 comments

  (April 15th 2016)
  

  Just received boards from pcb.ng service. They offer PCB assembly as a service for a very competitive price and the result is amazing. They can only assemble SMD parts available from digikey and mouser so I have to manually add a few parts: the teensy bootloader, the wifi module, the ws2812 leds and all through-holes. The first board I completed seems to work well.

  I found an issue with the "running light" led: it is backwards in my pick n place file and one of the ws2812 is not working but everything else looks good. The price is great and it will save me a lot of time on board assembly which should allow me to share the project with more people.

  On the left, one board received from pcb.ng - On the top right, a board assembled. Just missing the 20 contacts connectors.

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