A few days ago I posted images of the latest evolution of the BelfryBoy data logger, using a 3d printed cover filler with epoxy to give a nicer finish the the assembly.
the print house that supplied the covers weren't 100% happy with the result so they ran the print again and the results are fantastic! very clean lines, great curves, and dimensionally perfect! Many thanks to 4th Room, St. Anne's!
I have been busy this year with moving house, starting a new job and getting my girls settled into a new school, so there hasn't been a great deal of time to work on the BelfryBoy logger.
Despite all this I recently decided to address the aesthetics of the unit, since I have never been completely happy with how the finished logger looks.
I had looked into some sort of low pressure over moulding, like this service from Techsil.
But I decided that in the volume that I make these I couldn't really justify the expense.
I then happened upon the idea of 3d printing a shell that could then be filled with epoxy resin. The design work was all done using onshape, a fantastic cloud based CAD modelling tool, and then printed via 3dhubs, another brilliant online resource.
So here is the first of the finished covered loggers, it's a bit rough round the edges still, but with a little work I hope for a much more professional look.
Today I had a major upset in the build of this last batch of V2.1 loggers. My usual (reputable) supplier of FT232RL chips was out of stock, so I found a supplier on eBay. Unfortunately the chips were counterfeit. They looked almost identical, but when plugged into my laptop they reprogrammed themselves, and became non functional.
FT232RL chip fitted
The one on the left is genuine, on the right counterfeit!
It was in the end relatively trivial to edit the driver to function with these loggers, but I'm not willing to ship counterfeit goods to paying customers. This combined with a house move this weekend has severely impacted on my ability to supply all the orders that I received over Christmas. Normal service should be resumed in the next week once the new workshop is up and running.
This Christmas has been very busy in the BelfryBoy workshop, with 30 loggers ordered in the last month, this has taken up a lot of my time and my stock has dwindled rapidly, so I decided to see if the assembly process could be improved.
The last 15 Mk 2.1 boards with their younger brother Mk 2.3
The main bottleneck has been attaching the USB cable, so this was the obvious place to start, so I have changed the attachment method to use a solderless connector.
I have also found obtaining the FTDI USB to serial chip problematic, so have changed that as well.
One final improvement has been the addition of a small handle to make logger removal easier.
The first boards have arrived and been successfully tested and are now on their way to two lucky weather enthusiasts.
Thanks everyone for your continued patience if you have ordered one, they will be on their way in the next week.
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