Well I have been working with Arrow, TI, and Linear Tech on charger and electro-stimulation designs. That was pretty productive and I should soon have more power options for flex modules and updates to the flex modules.

I am pushing the I2C resistors to bus specific flex modules instead of the microcontrollers. This allows for those microcontroller pins to be utilized in other capacities and still allows simple plug in use of the flex modules.

I have been experimenting with improved castellations. I had utilized perf boards as jigs to quickly solder pins when breadboarding and planned to demo that for others. However, that may take more skill and patience than most people have :). So I am going to go with a whole 2.54 hole and then a castellation just 6mil after. This adds about 50mil to the outer edge.

Manufacturing quotes for large runs have been difficult. We have a local assembler Schippers & Crew that helped me refine panel designs and I received some tips from Seeedstudio. The DRV2605 LRA Driver Flex Module requires either a Via-In-Pad or a 3mil trace to route the middle DRV2605 pad. Between that and the size, I have had to request custom quotes and panelize the boards myself for proper quoting. Prices in the US have ranged from $5 to $20 per board in a panel of 100. Keep in mind this board is less than 1cm^2. TI is coming out with a slightly larger VSSOP footprint soon of the DRV2605L, so I might produce a lower cost version based on that. I plan to make an initial DRV2605 version with Seeedstudio in the next couple of weeks as they still have the lowest price per board ($3). If supplies of the DRV2605L appear in time (need to confirm with Arrow), I may just switch directly as it should fit OK.

To panelize I had made a tab routed version, but it was very space inefficient as it has a 100mil inner rail to add rigidity to the panel. Seeedstudio recommended rotating the boards 45' and attempt a V-cut or scoring along the non-castellated corners. This has produced a much more efficient panel, however DipTrace does not support 45' text in layouts. It does import gerber files, so I am working in another EDA tool to make the text and will import it in. The V-cut should provide a very clean look to the boards, hopefully I can similarly panelize all other flex modules.