GPIO, Mugs, Baseboard, and Beta. :) :)
about 6 years ago – Sat, Jan 12, 2019 at 01:58:17 AM

Howdy friends of Meadow!

Bryan here, some updates for you. :) 

Video of Meadow in Action

First, check out this video put together by Adrian Stevens of some basic GPIO things happening in Meadow, specifically, showing some colors on the onboard LED and lighting some external LEDs.

Mug Hotness

Next up, this is going to be the final mug:

We’ve looked at a lot of different colors and designs of the mugs, and honestly, this is my favorite design yet, it’s super clean and strong. However, you’ll notice, it’s not blue. 🧐😆 

We had some vendor/supplier issues with the blue one. Specifically, 1) they wouldn’t be able to deliver the mugs until late March/April, and 2) while the blue mug was nice, they weren’t able to color match our blue very well. So we decided to go with the white one.

Wooden Baseboards

Also, we got our Glowforge in, and we have been working on the wooden baseboard for those of you that backed at the hack kit level or higher. They look bloody awesome:

Wooo, so nice. Now, we only have to make 500 of them. 🤣

First Beta Boards Ship Next Week!

We’re still on track to ship beta boards out next week to our beta backers! We’re excited!

Happy New Year! BackerKit store is opening publicly + 3d printing stuff.
about 6 years ago – Wed, Jan 02, 2019 at 01:12:43 AM

Hey folks, Happy New Year!

Got several updates for you; we’re going to be opening the BackerKit store to the public, we’re on schedule, and we’ve got some cool new models for 3D printing and whatnot.

Opening the BackerKit Store

Ok, so first up, we’re going to open the BackerKit store to the public tomorrow. There are only a few boards left for purchase, and we expect them to go quickly. Most of you have already filled in the BackerKit survey and gone through the add-on store, but if you haven’t, this is your last chance to get in on upgrades before we open the store.

Schedule

We’re pretty much on schedule right now to ship rewards on time, pending any major issues. Right now we’re chasing a network issue on the board that we’re watching and could be a problem, but so far, we’re good. The current schedule is as follows:

• Next week - We hope to be putting in a new revision to prototype. It has some small fixes we ran into. Turnaround time will be a little over a week. 
• Jan ~15th - First beta boards go to beta backers! This will be the first of several board drops to our beta folks. 
• Feb 1ish - More boards to beta backers. These will be the updated prototypes that we’re rev’ing next week. 
• Last week of February - If all goes well, we’ll begin shipping final boards and hack kits!

When we ship in February, it’ll be a semi-public beta. We don’t want to lock down the API just quite yet, to give you folks an opportunity to provide feedback, find bugs, and help us fix things. We want to make sure we get this right, which means being able to break APIs that aren’t right out the door.

We don’t have any dates yet for a public retail release of the boards. For the retail release we want to get certification done of our WiFi and Bluetooth, and we’re not sure how long that will take.

3D Models

For folks building enclosures or project boxes, we’ve published a 3D model of the Meadow PCB:

We’ve had a number of inquiries from folks building enclosures for dimensions, so hopefully this can give you a jumpstart on new designs!

We’ve also created a 3D printable baseboard that fits a Meadow board along with a half+ size breadboard:

The baseboard is also compatible with Adafruit’s Perma proto board, so you can make a more permanent circuit.

Let us know if there’s anything else we can provide!

Meadow F7 Add-on Shipping
about 6 years ago – Thu, Dec 20, 2018 at 07:25:39 PM

This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.

BackerKit store, Awesome Solder Kit, Upgraded Oscilloscope, and more!
about 6 years ago – Wed, Dec 19, 2018 at 02:25:42 PM

Hey folks!

Bryan here; got some groovy updates for you.

First, our Kickstarter money finally hit our bank account! As such, we’ve begun the process of procurement for the hack kits, electronics workbench kits, SWAG, and board components. In fact, we just finished the last of our board components today! Feels good to get that tucked away.

We got our mug color samples last week. The middle one is going to be the final color:

Also, we’ve been setting up a BackerKit store, and there will be a last-chance opportunity to add additional boards and upgrades to your rewards. There will only be a limited number of additional boards available, and backers will get the first chance at them, so stay tuned. We’re also going to offer some cool upgrades, and even a new reward; a professional soldering station setup. Soldering is one of the most useful skills and common tasks when building connected things, and having a quality setup is essential, so we put together a killer kit for a great price. Keep an eye on your inbox for details. By the way, just like the workbench, the solder kit comes directly from my own lab bench:

Finally, awesome news for you folks that got the electronics workbench reward, we’ve been working with Rigol (a local Portland company), and got a sweet deal on an amazing oscilloscope, the DS2102E! It’s a beautiful scope that typically retails at well over $600, and includes automatic decode for UART, SPI, I2C, CAN and more, so it’s basically a logic analyzer and scope all in one:

If you missed out on the electronics workbench reward, but still want to get it on it, we’ll have a couple more available in the BackerKit store. But you’ll need to jump on it right away, it’s very limited.

That’s all for now, next update we’ll jump back into the technical details of what we’re up to with Meadow.

BackerKit surveys are coming!
about 6 years ago – Sun, Dec 16, 2018 at 12:30:19 AM

This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.