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Sooo, still on with the parts and this is what I've got so far. Tell me I'm crazy:

Should provide a good 'starting place' for prototyping some project (and hopefully complete some as well!)?

Man, 0402 is not really meant to hand assemble easily

The things are TINY!

I forgot to answer you about whether Espruino will ship, and I must say it looks like it :)
It will be a stripped down compile but it definitely looks as if Espruino will be the backbone for the 'smartness' of the sensor :)

And for the SMD parts into kits idea, maybe we should start a business? ;)

Hi @Gordon! The wood is pine and they market them as "hobby boards". They came as pre cut 235cm lengths of 20, 30 and 40 cm width at 1.8cm depth. Some of the boards were as long as 240 though...

The bench total will be about $400 which I think is totally worth it. It ended up the way I hoped basically :)

The fume extractor is just a precaution for me. I hope to be able to make some youtube videos and then it's worth to have it just to discourage people from yelling about it.

I did have a look at the OPL kit. It would've been perfect as a starting point.
I could pay quite a surcharge to find a 'serious starters kit' of components. Preferrably I'd want one with breadboardable components and one with SMT. I have seen those 'books' with components.
My goal is to cheat away ten years of gathering parts and equipment ;)

I am also considering taking a few hours to simply order what I want (it will be a lot :/ ) from digikey or equivalent and go from there. One other approach would be to order parts for the first couple of project I want to do, and just order more of each part that the project calls for. Only, I want to be able to prototype new ideas when I have them.

Also, I threw this together.

The "Unboxamarathon":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQyly_nn65w

Aaaand it's me again!

Guess who has bought a saw and a drill? Me. That's right :)

Home studio / workstation

Apologies for the horrid image... I need a new phone!

My humble start at an electronics bench

I actually filmed my unboxing of all the stuff there... I'll make a silly youtube of it.

Still need:

1. Lighting!
   
2. Install power outlets
   
3. Vise
   
4. Fume extractor
   
5. Magnifying light
   
6. ESD mat + wrist band
   
7. Parts for my parts bins :p
   
   

Allright! On with the projects :)

Wice SmartSensor

BTW. Here's the newest revision of the Wice SmartSensor board. Some Design For Manufacture things done!

Just wanted to add my +1 for adding ReferenceError :)

Nice update @Gordon!

Also @Cale, masterHbndler is not the same as masterHandler ;)

I think learning and using other packages than Eagle is a good idea. I feel there's is much more similarities between the other I've tried than Eagle has with any of them. With KiCAD f.ex you're learning to use EE CAD in terms of navigation and UI (KiCAD has a slightly weird way to do symbol-to-footprint but every package has it's quirks).

I will convert my open source projects to Altium Circuit Maker as I really like the way it feels (though KiCAD is more productive due to the fact I know, and there is, shortkeys).

Really nice :) Here is the datasheet on the parallell flash chip.
1MB would give only slightly more than 10 seconds with 16bit@44.1kHz, or twenty seconds if 8bit provides sufficient fidelity to catch the phonemes with the chosen microphone. Not too surprised to see a RAM on there :) When you have room to store the entire word instead of just a running buffer for the current phoneme you can make better predictions between words.

HAve you tried it @DrAzzy ?

Thanks for the reminder!

For the next version I'll probably change USB to tag-connect and make a ZIF jig for programming the initial bootloaders (which is Espruino for the STM as you know).

I'm having a weird issue with the diode being a smoke-emitting diode. So strange... :( The power section is the same as previous revision, and the same as the power from Espruino. It's D1 from the Espruino schematic that smokes, oh well. Onwards with troubleshooting!

I'm using Chipquik flux and solder and I'm very happy with it. Truth be told though I've not tried anything other than this. Someone told me when I started with electronics to buy good quality solder so I've always spent money on something above the 'bottom line' in terms of price.

EDIT: Come to think of it I'm pretty sure I heard it in one of the early EEVBlog videos ^^

New revision fresh out of the oven (and some flux retouch on the ICs)

I changed the crystal for the CC430 to an oscillator, and I've removed the balun passives for an IC balun/filter (Johanson balun and filter). Fixed a few mistakes (such as not routing RST line to JTAG header....., and making USB footprint from bottom view image i.e mirrored about x axis....) and I hope to get more tests done now :)

The next revision will be 4 layers and much smaller as I'll drop out most of what's only there to aid my testing and developing of the firmware. Also I will not manually pick and place the next version so I can use 0402 parts. Lastly I'll be able to actually follow TIs design guidelines for the RF signal path. Need to read up on co-planar wave guides but it's all fun :)

Most of the gear for my lab has arrived but I've not had time to build the desk yet. When the desk is built I planned on making a few silly unboxing videos. I've peeked a bit and I must say the Thermaltronics soldering station looks very promising :D

It's funny that the reason for 666 and 616 is the sum of the numerical equivalents for the letters of Nero Caesar (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkZqFtYtqaI
).
10K comments, that's nice!

Really cool stuff :) This would be a perfect first project for my 11yo kid brother!

Looks very nice! My slight OCD triggers a bit on your inconsistency between GND and Gnd though ;)

Have you seen this http://www.espruino.com/Battery ? :)

EDIT: after reading your post more thoroughly I guess you have seen it. Have you tried searching an online catalog for something that meets your requirements?

Thanks @Gordon
I'll spend time on this tomorrow and get it ticking. It's TI CC430 indeed. The only connection it has to the Espruino is on Serial1. The crystal is used for the RF part (CC1101 equiv) of the mCU.

It's programmed with a slightly modified Dash7 stack. I'll try to use the vanilla one just to be sure. It is configured for an external crystal, at least I'm told. Probably a good idea to double check this as well.

Hope to get it resolved tomorrow :)

Right now I have zero oscillations :( It's just flat.

Do you think I could use another Espruino as the clock somehow? I really need to find some way of hacking this together just to check that my RF balun works. Hehe. Nothing much going on with the radio as it's not clocked...

So, you're recommending that I change to an oscillator?
Maybe this: http://www.abracon.com/Oscillators/ASEMB.pdf

How would one wire to XIN and XOUT if using an oscillator (or external MCU / freq gen - if this is even possible)?

Pulling my hair out!

So, I'm having issues with my crystal not working..

Here's the actual schematic and crystal:

XRCGB26M000F3M00R0: Crystal 26.0000MHz, 30ppm, 6pF, 150 Ohm

I'm pretty sure that I used the exact same model (on crystal and caps) that I found in a reference design for the micro (cc430f5137).

My oscilloscope does not see any frequency for the crystal.

A couple of questions:

1. Can one measure from ground to one of the outputs, or will the probe need to be between the xtal in/out?
   
2. When the datasheet says floating, would connecting it to ground inhibit the crystal?
   

Brilliant!

Spot on (re; autotune)!

It could be a shim as well, that simply feeds back a voltage (or pwm, or freq?) as a function of the cap.sense. Should be doable with a small attiny85 or some such. (Probably way too overkill for the feature though.. my head just started spinning).

Maybe it's a project for showcasing your Dream Protoboard @DrAzzy? ;)

That's the current plan at least. Am I being stupid? I will take the bench with me if/when I move. I hope to make something sturdy :)

I won't screw those component drawers tight, and if I decide (when..) that I need to stock up on hardware then I'll get some drawers for that and have them on the floor.

The plan to use off the shelf desk is scrapped (as I give it to my GF) so, I'll build it of Oak.

The table top is 3cm, the feed are 10x10 (I forgot to draw cross bars near the floor, the thing should form a C with me sitting in the opening of it. |_| with the _ close to the wall. Not easy to explain when I don't know any terms for it. Everything is built from either 10x10 or 3x10 pieces of wood.

Doing some kind of bolting (instead of screws) for the legs is probably a good idea. Maybe just screw on a cross section which the legs can then bolt into?

Seen from below:
+-+--------------
| |[ ]<-bolt 
| |
| |[ ] <- bolt
+-+---------------

VBAT would be the pin to connect V+ (3.5-16v) indeed.

For some reason, your question got me uncertain - but I don't see it being any other way.