PROTOTYPE #3: SINGLE BOARD DESIGN
When you do things from your heart you can feel a river inside you. We like to call that excitement! We have so much excitement to share with you. Since our last product development update, we’ve spent many days working hard to combine all hardware features together.
Our clock has a central processor with Bluetooth Low Energy Radio Chip, a bunch of LED drivers that drive an assortment of full-color RGB LEDs for glanceable display and array of white LEDs to display text easily.
There are:
- ambient light sensors to adjust the display brightness,
- sensors for clock movement calibration,
- drivers to manage motors, and
- a speaker amplifier
- a rechargeable battery
We are feeling the clock’s excitement! Do you hear that ticking? Glance clock will only display important information that is valuable and relevant to you. We have come a long way in designing the perfect smart wall clock that will display your life.
We did one step and saw the results, we continued repeating the process. We found and through many iterations, successes and failures.
Let’s start from the beginning to illustrate what we’ve done and how our product works. We’ve started from the most complicated and important part of our invention - the central processor - the clock’s heart. We selected CC2640 BLE-SystemOnChip from Texas Instruments and started to build all things around it. After careful consideration, we selected this chip because it's one of the most technologcally advanced available - and we suspect it may place an increasingly important role in the evolution of the internet of things.
Our first PCB board was very simple. We had all connectors and components on it to connect the display and peripherals. There are actually two displays and they were developed on separate boards and then connected together. There were no sensors and clock mechanism - it was a very early prototype. We did think about the power supply, and the 4th board was entirely used for that. There were 4 different power supplies on one board. We tested them all and selected the best one!
What was next? We’ve proved some hardware solutions and rejected others, then we had to produce the next prototype. Our PCB/Mechanical engineer Danil, worked so hard to combine all four boards. Even though it looked impossible, we made it work. The crazy part is that the only question that arises from Danil was, “Where should the array of white LEDs be?”
Cheers to our first and not our last single board design… and it looked good! We also simplified the assembling process and increased the reliability. In addition, we’ve added two motors to manage the minute and hour hands separately. This will serve to ensure accurate time and durability to the product. Plus there are special sensors to synchronize the hands for any time zone. They will automatically adjust according to your phone’s time. We’ve combined all necessary parts together and made a single board design. This was a revolutionary moment, because it was the first time when we saw Glance Clock a reality.
Our next iterations and prototypes will be very important, but each of them will be a better and improved version of the previous one. Today, we are working on an improving the LED lights output, increasing power supply and the accuracy of the clock movement. We are in the process of making the perfect Glance Clock that will fill your heart with excitement.
Please feel free to share your thoughts with us and share Glance Clock with your friends. Stay in touch for next updates.
