Is this controller will ever released?
Since rebooting, yes. The prior versions just were awkward and fiddly, I'm much happier how this is coming together.
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Is this controller will ever released?
The biggest time is still the wire cutting and stripping.
I've been doing a bunch of prototyping and sorting out my wire inlet problems. In short, they were a mess since there was nearly not enough space on the first shot boards to route cables. Cables and wires in any situation occupy some sort of non-euclidean space and defy logic, so its very hard to simulate these things without a ton of other work to figure out bend radius, possibility for a human to install, etc etc.
It turns out there isn't enough clearance through to the top of the case, and the quick connect tabs are simply in an un-routable position, AND using the PCB as the ground bonding point is contraindicated.
Example of a partially built board doing fit checking:
Simply no good.
But, we have plenty of options, including this fake PCB I 3d-printed to check component positioning, and this new routing scheme:
This uses 90 degree flag quick connects, and pushes the whole power supply left a good distance. The ground wire is now running to a ground ring, which will act as the ground bond point AND connect to the PCB, giving a lot of rigidity. The extra space also makes it easy to mount the CT for current measurements.
The standoffs act to tie all the case work and PCB together here, and reduce board flex when inserting and removing connectors. I'll probably order a replacement set of boards this week while I finish designing the main logic board.
Some other updates:
- The initial design passes a variety of HiPot tests. The target voltage for this type of design is around 1.2kV of insulation to ground, which passes from the PCB and PCB in case perspective so there were no major goofs there:
(Test was run over multiple minutes and different parameters, so don't fret for the 1s test time for this picture).
- I'm getting quotes to streamline machining the top of the enclosure - the first few will be done in house. But thankfully everything fits, thanks to this 3d printed mockup of a machined top:
I also did some more testing for connectors, and still fell back on the JST XA series. The closest contender was the Molex Nano-Fit (actually used on the APEX for the power connectors). Very good connector, 4.5x the cost, and it presents a unique problem of giving a very wide "lever arm" on the PCB when on the strip which will inevitably lead to lots of broken board connectors. I'm going to keep it in the back pocket, but sticking with the slightly uglier but very functional XA series (top connector).
Thanks for tagging along with this product design journal. I'm going to do a good write-up summary at some point, including development costs (not cheap). Maybe I'll need to do a Kickstarter to get good volume pricing for folks
Also, I did a teardown of "that other brand" for interest value since the last "other brand" commercial controller I owned was last generation. You can find it on Twitter (same username as here).
Next update will be on sensor assemblies, and on the firmware architecture - which means more diagrams and less pictures. I'm still planning on keeping that open source, since that is the power of the community to built what _they_ want, not what commercial partnerships you want.
Also, _IMPORTANT QUESTION_ if you made it this far: What should I even name this thing? :-D
Name it after the clam
I don’t do it every day anymore, but I made a good living diagnosing failures in electronics subject to high shock and vibration. It’s almost always a failure in the connectors/wiring harness. It’s always shocking to me how some engineers are comfortable wadding up slack cables and jamming the wad into a void somewhere.Looking good. Nice work so far!
I can tell alot of thought is going into the design.
As someome who gets into control panels, control boxes and various electrical connection compartments on a daily basis, the fact that you thought about cables beforehand gets you a step ahead. Seems thats the last thing most designers/engineers think about, cables and connectors. Usually it ends up being something cobbled together to just make it work, and this is on commercially available equipment.
When this part of design is overlooked, cable and connector failure becomes one of the major failure points on said equipment.
Well what did I miss? LOL.. I got distracted for a while after shifting jobs. So I was looking an at one point you were talking about a water level sensor using a pressure sensor. I was just curious if you got that working. It looks like I got ton to catch up on here. Thanks.
The RJ10 port is the CAN bus link which can link sensors to other control points in an autonomous way (just broadcasting messages for sensor values), in lieu of using the USB port for active control.
You so should add Apex support to this