Project Logs

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• First batch of uECGs and bases is finished!

  Kseniia • 8 hours ago • 0 comments

  Okay, this is happening - the factory has finished production, and after some more days spent communicating and fixing a led polarity issue (classic), the assembled uECGs and bases are ready. Now we have to wait for them for a few days, then tackle the customs (we never did this).

  We produced 50 uECGs and 50 receiver bases. Most of them go to Indiegogo backers, the rest will be in stock for Tindie shop for makers from the waitlist! And yes, we are aiming to start second batch production soon after we ship this one.
  Todo stuff for the set assembly and shipping:

  - Snap connectors - already here

  - Batteries (501240, 250 mAh - more hours than the previous version) - already here

  - ST-Link v2 programmers - already here

  - USBs for the bases (for manual through-hole soldering here) - shipping from China

  - Gel electrodes, screws for the cases, custom pogo pin adapters - shipping  from China 
  - 3D printing the cases - need to check the model, then we're ready to print lots of them at a very responsible and accurate guy whom we were happy to find in our hood in Kyiv :)

  - Cardboard boxes, cardboard layers, wood stuffing for the shipping packages (no plastic, but have to achieve anti-static properties and damp well) - already tested, need to buy enough for the 50 sets now
  - Box stickers design and printing - beta ready, need to design some more and they're ready to print.
  All in all, seems like a plan. Still can't imagine us assembling 50 of those.
  I guess we'll find out how this feels real soon!

• It's happening - uECG sent to production!

  Lucy Sohryu • 11/16/2019 at 20:53 • 0 comments

  After three days of...

  - taking precise measurements of every micro USB, slider switch or tact button in the house;

  - filling out proper manufacturer part numbers for every single component down to the last 0.8 pF capacitor;

  - browsing lcsc.com to find out that those exact part numbers are either out of stock or 'not recommended for new designs' and then replacing them;

  - making several important changes to the schematics and the PCBs on the fly (yay fiducials!);

  - finding out the exact reason why those 32MHz crystals are positioned upside down in the library and then flipping them;

  - hunting for the common anode on the RGB LED (and then providing screenshots with red arrows pointing out where exactly the common anode is on the PCB);

  - briefly contemplating replacing all black chip packages with white ones (don't ask);

  - calculating the actual prices of all components on the board;

  - and then almost despairing to find out that the .pos file is in the wrong format (minutes before submitting the order);

  ...we finally sent uECG (and the bases) into production. This has been a few days ago (actually, Wednesday night) and they're still under review so far. Granted, it's only the first fifty devices (each), but that'll be enough to send to our Indiegogo backers and have the rest in stock on Tindie.

  There are many articles on the web about the wonders and horrors of PCB production, and almost all of them have one thing in common - that there is no single 'right way' to do it. Just as an example, every manufacturer has a different concept of how their dream BOM should look like. And, most importantly, the .pos file - the one that says where your components should be positioned on the board and how to place them... 

  In a sense, preparing production files is fun. It is also hard, exhausting, and time-consuming work (especially the 'find the correct MFN' part). It is also insanely motivating - we're producing our devices, finally! No more manual assembly! And then, at some point, it's over and you check, double-check, and triple-check everything. You upload the files. Hit 'submit'. And then you wait. That's exactly what we're doing right now (waiting), and it's probably going to take a while. 

  But we're finally did it! And now that we did, it's time to focus on stuff we put on hold - like writing project logs, picking up other projects (ours and otherwise), and thinking about long-term life goals. Plus, things will be happening soon, so we'll try to keep you updated more often!

• Almost there!

  Ultimate Robotics • 11/06/2019 at 11:43 • 0 comments

  After some hard fights with KiCAD libraries, finding pogo pin adapters and last but not least - half of our team moving to another apartment, uECGs and bases for them are almost ready for sending to production. Just need to check the rotation of the components and add some comments to the final BOM.

  Time to change that ETA on tindie.

• We're back in Kyiv from MakerFaire Rome!

  Ultimate Robotics • 10/24/2019 at 00:01 • 0 comments

  We're finally back and it's been a crazy few days - both on MakerFaire and beyond, as we have never been to Italy and never traveled for such a long time as a team. Saw amazing stuff, met nice people, drank a lot of cappuccinos!

  So, in short:

  - We're dead tired, but we're starting to get back to life;

  - On the way back, they lost one car from a night train we were supposed to take from Rome to Venice (we decided to go the long way), and the station had to arrange a motel for us and the other passengers. The guy on the motel reception didn't even blink when we told him the story - said that's completely normal. We wrote a facebook post about the adventure (and posted some photos of huge Venetian seagulls!);

  - By the way, we ate our best pizza in Venice - in Pizza 2000. Good shit.

  - Back to the MakerFaire: it was HUGE. Hundreds of makers. Thousands of people. 
  

  The first day, Friday 18th, was Education Day in Italy. Up to 25 000 students boarded the trains from? early in the morning and crowded Fiera di Roma. In a couple hours they ate almost one kilogram of sweets that we brought from Kyiv, and that's only cause the plate wasn't big, and we filled it at some intervals. Well, if that's what it takes for the kids to like technology!
  

  - Saturday was more niche - people were more focused, listened with interest and tested uECG and uGlass. This was also the day when at least two doctors came to our booth, saw uECG, brightened up visibly cause they liked it and said the signal was good - one even gave us suggestions to add a cardioprobe to see the ECG signal from various angles. Very useful, will definitely want to work on that. 
  

  We also learned to explain what our devices did with gestures and simple keywords, as it turned out most Italians don't know English - "Bluetooth ECG, PC, Android, medical signal, electrocardiogram, like in hospital, here - is - from - here (pointing at the device under T-shirt and laptop screen)" and so on. Sometimes just gestures, and it was even faster :)
  

  This was also a very social day - we met Naomi Wu (aka SexyCyborg)! In real life, she's VERY lively, and very friendly. She brought a drone that could charge from a pad with pogo pins and a LED ring - we took some pics of that and a selfie :) She's also stylish and just great, liked her a lot!

  In the evening, we went to our first Hackaday meetup! Met a lot of people: Mike Szczys, Larry Bank, Kitty Yeung, Helen Leigh, Drew Fustini (from Beagleboard), Robert Fitzsimmons (he of the large LED), Mastro Gippo (he's the one making PRISM), Laura Gales from UDOO, and other guys! A loud bunch showing each other devices with LEDs in an Italian restaurant. Loved it!
  

  - Sunday was rather quiet. Our table looked the most professional and we answered more clearly after Saturday. Our broken Italian English was perfect. We were getting really tired though, cause we tried to see Rome in between (mostly in the evenings) and slept very little. Also, tending to the booth and answering a lot of people at once is very draining - but it's also something you can't feel anywhere else.
  

  We also took some time to go and see the other booths. There were 10 halls, and we tried to visit at least some of them, take pictures, talk to makers - want to write a separate log about that. There was just so much of everything!

  Looks like this is almost it for this log! After we came back and slept for a day, we noticed something's been happening to uGlass page, cause it's been snowballing followers and it's now in top of the projects page. Was that Mike Szczys' comment? :)
  

  Now we'll have to go and write a log there too!

• We're in Rome!

  Ultimate Robotics • 10/17/2019 at 14:27 • 1 comment

  Makerfaire's a big event here: the ads are on the walls, trams, buses and metro turnstiles. Looks really cool, and everybody knows about it, our apartment landlord included.
  

  So with this exposure, we thought, Rome must have lots of makers, and tools and Arduinos sold at every corner. Imagine our surprise when google searches haven't found almost anything about saldatores (italian for soldering iron) when we really needed one (can't take it on a plane) and we only managed to find it after two days of search at some general tools store on the street. Maybe italians are so cool they just stack arduinos when they need to make a device?

  Thing is, in our last few days before the travel, we were really busy finishing the commercial projects to send to clients and trying to fit our own projects in any minute left. Managed to assemble three v4 uECGs and USB bases for them, but successfully forgot two uECGs at home and only realized that in Naples. Were really sad about it, but the third uECG v4 still flew with us, so there's that. We also packed:

  • a couple older working uECGs
  • a new uEMG board and electrodes for it (unsoldered)
  • a pair of new DWM1001-based localization modules, and a pair of the older ones
  • a working uGlass AR module (attached to glasses)
  • a nice round BLE base board with plenty of LEDs, which we've written about in the previous post
  • some soldering supplies, wires
  • batteries!
  • tindie cards, business cards and a poster with the devices and catchy inspirational text about open hardware
  • and one kilogram of sweets from Kyiv to give away!

  So I guess we still have chances at assembling a nice table. Now we are going to Fiera di Roma by a suburban train – cause the Makerfaire is just outside the city area - to get our Makerfaire badges and prepare the booth for tomorrow, but not before we add some evening Colosseum pictures to this update!

  We only got to see it in the evening, and it's so huge. Weird thing is how Italians just go around their business, and it just stands there. Love it here!

• New PCBs from factory: uECG (v4) and 16-LED nRF52832 base

  Ultimate Robotics • 10/01/2019 at 13:47 • 0 comments

  A package from PCBWay with a new version of uECGs just dropped! Or rather was brought by DHL courier, which deliver better and better by the shipment - previously we shied away from them, because there were too much red tape and they were arrogant, but maybe they're not so bad after all. 
  Anyway, there were three uECG versions before this one:
  - the v1.0, made back in December, 2018, which required some wires to work and had ECG snap connectors salvaged from Chinese cheap wired electrodes bought at a taobao acupuncture shop. We found a shop that sold snap connectors after that, which was a great adventure that took some weeks, but we learned some Chinese words along the way.
  - the working v2.2 - most featured in videos and tests
  - black one, the v3.1 - we had experimented with halvanic skin measurement there, but that didn't work so well. We also planned to add vibe motors to make a gamer feedback device - maybe still do that later.
  - and now the new v4 had all bugs fixed (thanks to hackaday commenters for pointing out some of those!): analog and digital ground is properly connected now, and it also has protection in form of a resettable fuse and a BAV99.
  

  Read more »

• Project ideas: uECG for EMG and branching out into AR!

  Lucy Sohryu • 09/28/2019 at 00:42 • 0 comments

  Like uECG is a simple solution to a usually overcomplicated problem, we have a few other projects that aim to hack modern technology into small, manageable, open-source pieces. Most of the time they exist in different forms - "good idea" seems to be the most popular. But recently a couple of them moved to the next stage.

  Read more »

• The honest update

  Lucy Sohryu • 09/23/2019 at 23:49 • 2 comments

  Originally, we intended this to be just another standard project log.

  Then we stopped, examined what we were doing, and wrote this instead.

  ---

  One week ago, we were super excited about everything going on. Yes, Indiegogo wouldn't release our money, but things were happening all around us - at an alarming rate. We went from nobody to Hackaday Prize finalist (as per our previous update). People have been following our page. We set up our Tindie page and people started pre-ordering uECGs. We had several new devices just about ready for production, with only a few minor touches left (like actually doing the PCB layouts for them). And we were just about ready to solve the Indiegogo problem by setting up a TransferWise account - and then waiting until they do a background check on us to activate that account.

  Then everything changed. 

  Read more »

• Things are happening! (big update)

  Lucy Sohryu • 09/11/2019 at 22:31 • 0 comments

  Hello - and welcome to our 10th project log! Things have been happening, the short version of which is:
  

  - we've set up our Tindie store, so now you can get uECG pre-ordered there!

  - our crowdfunding campaign is over, and we raised enough to find out people are interested in uECG;

  - we're going to Rome for MakerFaire, October 18-20, and will bring uECG and a couple of new projects;

  - Make:Magazine did a Maker Spotlight on us - here;

  - our website is back, and looking better;

  - and last, but not least, we (suddenly for us) made it into Hackaday Prize finals! Being busy with our Indiegogo campaign in July, and grappling with Indiegogo bureaucracy through August, we kind of completely forgot about Hackaday - until yesterday, when an email arrived, saying that we're one of the 20 finalists for the Hackaday Prize! This was on top of a wave of activity we had in the last few days, so it's probably time for a short recap of what's happened.

  First of all, though, we've decided to set up an online store at Tindie. The store looks a bit raw, but if you want to get your uECG from us, hit this link and it will take you to the product page :)

  Second of all, our Indiegogo campaign concluded in July, raising $2031 over the month - our minimum goal was just $600. The campaign has been in inDemand since August, so we've actually raised a bit more money since then, and will use it to produce and ship more devices than originally intended.

  Sadly, Indiegogo hasn't exactly been forthcoming: it took us several weeks to get our identity verified, and we've yet to get the funds we raised because of some problem or other. That's why we've been exploring other options to get our devices out there, while also getting ready for production - that's a new one, and we're actually looking forward to it.

  Third, we'll be at MakerFaire Rome this October! If you're in the area, come find us at Fiera di Roma from Oct. 18 to 20 :) Rome is a very big event for us, the biggest one in Europe, and we're getting ready for it. We'll be bringing uECG, of course - it's the star of the show. But we also have a few projects in progress that we'll bring as well.

  Also, the MakerFaire Rome team got us in touch with Make:Magazine for their Maker Spotlight feature - the interview went out just yesterday, and you can check it out here - we talk about what drives us, what our future goals are and what we believe in. 

  Fourth, with all the commotion, we finally got to sorting our website out! Now it runs on Ghost and is still under construction, but with the old website in limbo for so long, that in itself is a fascinating project. 

  And last, but not least, the Hackaday Prize - we're honored to have made it into the finals, and we're grateful for the opportunity to participate. Honestly, we never expected that we'd make it. 

  To everyone who's liked and followed our project: thank you! 

• We're crowdfunding!

  Ultimate Robotics • 07/03/2019 at 22:11 • 0 comments

  Finally we got to post on Hackaday! We're back from Makerfaire - it's been a very busy time. Lots of people (20+) tested our device in the field, so to say, and ironically, it could be considered a stress testing for our device, though we couldn't measure its stress level :) Surprisingly, it worked well on most of the people - the only complications were body hair and when some of the clothes made it difficult to stick (for example, on women).

  We were very excited that people could see our device and that it was interesting to them. Mostly they were just excited to try it, and some of the other people fell into two categories: they either didn't understand what's it for, or straight up wanted to work with it. We even had a doctor tell us that he definitely wants to use it to just give patients to wear at home, as a support to hospital diagnostics! 
  

  And one other person we gave our device and the USB desktop base for it so he could use it for development immediately, which was immensely inspiring. The excitement could probably be better seen on our faces in the photo, if we weren't so tired :P The exhibition is a very noisy, busy place, and we spent a lot of time getting there and preparing and running around, but it was totally worth it!
  

  (by the way, the big screen shows some EEG, which is our other project, Skulljack)
  

  We have been planning crowdfunding uECG for some time before the Makerfaire, so we prepared discount coupons with a QR code link to secret perk, but weren't sure if anyone will be interested. But people took around 30-40 of them, so when we returned we decided to do it :)

  The campaign is now live on Indiegogo. It's nothing fancy, just uECG - base price of which is $79 - and a couple options, like adding a 3D printed case, our USB base station and a Chinese STLink clone so you don't have to wait for it from Aliexpress!
  
  

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