Just a quick update.

I’ve spent a lot of time on trying to find a local metal-shop that could help with the manufacturing of the enclosure. The main body of the latter _I_ will do, but the end discs are more problematic. Unfortunately, and to the best of my knowledge, they are typically made through (what’s called) metal stamping–and that seems to require a mould. Well, moulds are expensive, and they are used for large production-runs. Ergo, I have no option that I know of!

The PCB sample arrived. I’ll have to do SMD soldering, which is definitely not filed under Fun! Not the soldering itself, but in debugging any problems back to any mistake in SMD soldering!

And then there is the issue of getting the compiler toolchain to work with the new micro-controller. Over the years, I’ve done a lot of work with these, but I simply do not have the time (or inclination) to spend time on this when there are so many other demands on my time. Bluntly, it is not a problem that interests me anymore. But, finding affordable sub-contractors capable, and willing, to do it has been difficult. And embedded presents its own challenges for outsourcing: The required hardware cannot easily be shipped abroad for a remote engineer to work on!

The firmware is getting nice new functionality in it. I am very excited about this addition, which fits very well atop the foundation, structure and features already built. This is the main task which I was to have worked on this week, but other demands have slowed progress.

Two local artists will be working on what was to have been the logo. However, with so many variants of ‘Bike Minder’ and ‘Minder’ etc being used (whether by products, sites or groups), I decided to forego the name, for now.