SwagBadge2021 Status, blog and timeline
Status: 2020-10-11
Phew! The OLED screens are enroute as are the Lolin ESP32 microprocessors. The Chinese national holiday added a delay that had us all nervously refreshing the shipment tracking page. The PCB design is being finalised today and we expect to send that order off tomorrow. We hope this will give us a narrow window for a second run if they come back faulty in some way and still meet our overall shipping deadline.
This week has mostly been about making sure we had the design and components and layout on the PCB solid to meet our goals of something that would
- be useful right at the start without any additional components
- be elegant to look at
- function as a badge
- have the SAO extension points are in useful locations and pointing in useful directions.
- have space to include the important logos for the conference!
If you'd like to hear more about the PCB design, one of our team, the delightful Jon Oxer, runs a livestream most Sunday mornings. His latest episode talks about the swagbadge from about 34 minutes in.
On the software front, we're starting to think about what we want the badge to support from the moment you switch it on. (Including how you'll be able to configure it for your network). In coming weeks we'll talk about how you, our community, can get involved in the software side as well as the hardware side.
Status: 2020-10-04
Project approved and announced ... #swagbadge hardware design underway ... #swagbadge major parts ordered ... #dagbadge BoM not yet finalized ... Core team (mostly) assembled and ready to start building the community ... SAO hardware community development not yet commenced (but ideas are brewing) ... #swagbadge firmware development is still flying under-the-radar !
Note: Whilst the #swagbadge major parts have been ordered (330x ESP32 microcontrollers and 660x OLED screens), we are already sweating on shipping delays !
Recent 3D render 2020-09-30
Recommendations for those who can't wait to get started
- Play with microPython on-line: Select peripheral "I2C LCD", choose demo "I2C LCD" and press "Run script"
- Play with microPython on Unix: See section "The Unix version"
- Read up on SAO hardware add-ons: How to extend the #swagbadge using a 6 pin (2x3) connector with power, I2C bus and 2x GPIO pins
Blog and timeline
- 2020-10-04: #swagbadge project public announcement
- 2020-09-24: Preparing for initial public announcement
- 2020-09-17: GitHub repository: #swagbadge hardware created
- 2020-09-11: Assembling core OHMC team ... getting the band back together
- 2020-09-10: #swagbadge project green light ... we're good to go ! Trying not to spill the beans ?
- 2020-09-07: #swagbadge project proposal (goals, timeline and costs) sent to LCA2021
- 2020-08-26: #swagbadge project conception
- 2020-05-06: LCA2021 in Canberra "postponed" to 2022 and rebooted as on-line and world-wide for 2021 ... finally made it to Antarctica !
- 2018-01-22: LCA2021 GitHub repository: Aiko Engine for microPython incept date
LCA2021 swag badge very first render 2020-09-02
