If we want to get close to a professional product we need a testing scheme. This would not be necessary for the 25 boards we ordered now, but for a mass production by a major assembly company. This is our goal, after all and there is no reason, not to do it right from the start.

Even for just uploading the bootloader and code, we need a board with pogo pins. An Arduino Uno will serve as an “Arduino as ISP”. Since we will have that board already, it should also do the testing. My idea is, that the Arduino Uno should handle the serial interface of the tracker board and go through the first calibration steps. If all serial responses of the tracker are correct, it is obviously working.

The functional test should include the sun sensor and the motor control. In the third calibration step, the tracker follows the sun with the tracking sensor. We can simulate a tracking signal by sending a small current to the photocells. As a result, the motors should start running and the current sensing should sense the motor currents in all directions.

All serial communication between the tracker and the UNO (soft serial) will be mirrored through the native serial port of the UNO to the computer. Furthermore there is a max485 adapter on the board to test the RS485 communication.

Setting up the full test program will take time. Therefore, we also include an FTDI USB Serial Adapter to address the tracker board directly from the computer. 

This arrangement should make uploading and testing easy. You can see my scheme below and yesterday evening I had a long session with Ermanno to discuss the schematic and board layout. He is great.