[sha2017-orga] SHA2017 Badge sweatshop and update

[Sebastian Oort]

Hi guys, i bring good news and well not really great news. And a fix for that.

This wednesday afternoon/evening we’ll do another Badge sweatshop. Mounting displays, flashing firmware (and testing most hardware in the meantime), glueing displays and packaging the badge. We need help, let me know if you have time. We really need 16 to 18 people to make this work.

Now the less fun news:

Half of the badges are ‘broken’. Apparently we got around 2000 USB-Serial chips that are clones. Yeah we got p0wned by a Shenzen local. We actually expected that and thought nothing of it: the clones we knew worked better than the original! And yes they do work fine as a USB Serial chip. 

The batch we got have a minor design flaw, they "forgot" some input protection and (insert more technical details) prevents it from booting when working on battery. As our testing process does not involve the battery circuit, we’re very lucky we caught this problem.

We spent the afternoon devising a fix and we have found it. Luckily we do not have to replace the chip (at 1 euro a piece in volume and with not so nice lead-times) but we do have to add in one tiny resistor in a tight spot. Totally workable but at 1 or 2 minutes a board, a lot of work. 

So what we’re doing is this:

The sweatshop this Wednesday will have one additional station: to filter out the bad chips. Those boards will be reworked at a later date, probably this Friday or Saturday by a group of volunteers who get to bring their soldering A-game. More on that later, but if you have the time, the skill and the tools, please be in touch. We will get ready as many boards as we can so we can still hand them out at the entrance. If that fails, we’ll do a voucher of sorts so we can do the rest ‘on the field’ as a last resort.

A lot more work when we least expected it. We’ll make it work, but we’ll need help. Please ask friends, neighbors, family. For Wednesday technical know-how is not needed. 

Thanks,

Sebastius / Bas