FCDEV3B V2 boards are here

[Rafael Diniz]

Hi Mychaela,

This is very good news - wonderful! In the name of Rhizomatica T express
our gratitude for the donation - thank you!

Rafael Diniz
Rhizomatica

On 1/12/19 7:59 PM, Mychaela Falconia wrote:
> Hello FreeCalypso community,
> 
> I am overjoyed to announce that our FCDEV3B V2 boards are finally here:
> last night I have tested the first batch of 8 boards which I picked up
> from Technotronix on Thursday.  Here are the findings:
> 
> Yield: out of the total of 8 boards in this batch, 5 are good and 3
> have defects.  Out of the 3 defective boards, one has perfectly working
> RF but is unable to talk to the SIM in the socket, while the other two
> have RF defects: one has totally dead RF (both Rx and Tx, all 3 bands),
> the other exhibits a bad Rx path for the low band, but the rest works.
> In the case of the board on which only the SIM interface doesn't work,
> we have previously encountered the same symptoms in one of our earlier
> FCDEV3B V1 batches, and replacing the SIM socket made it work, hence I
> am going to try the same on this board.  In the case of the two boards
> with different RF defects, I will have a discussion with Technotronix
> about failure analysis.  But even if we are not able to fix any of
> those 3 defective boards, we still have 5 perfectly good ones from
> this batch.
> 
> V2 changes: unlike our previous FCDEV3B V1 boards, these new V2 boards
> have perfectly working sleep while keeping our high-capacity Spansion
> S71PL129NC0HFW4B flash+pSRAM chip!  Thus we now have proof that my
> innovative (not from TI, not from OM, not from Pirelli) flash reset
> circuit change is working as I intended.  With my recent changes to
> the firmware we have regained flash chip type autodetection, thus we
> can now populate either this big Spansion flash+pSRAM chip or the
> smaller Samsung flash+RAM chip that was used by Openmoko and have the
> same fw build work with both, but for our development boards we are
> keeping the big version for the obvious reason: large flash and RAM
> capacity is very handy for development.  If anyone ever pays for the
> development of a commercial FreeCalypso modem module in a small SMT
> form factor, that version can use the smaller memory capacity more
> appropriate for a production modem.
> 
> Out of the 5 defect-free boards in this batch, the availability is as
> follows: one board I need to keep for myself, one more board is
> earmarked for Rafael (Rhizomatica), and the other 3 are now available
> for commercial users at the regular price of $500 USD each.  If the
> latter 3 boards are not bought quickly by the people I have in mind,
> at least one of them will be reallocated to FreeCalypso marketing
> outreach purposes: I would like to offer a free board to anyone from
> the ofono developer community who would be willing to get our FC modem
> product family properly supported in ofono.  Aside from the 3 defective
> boards which may or may not be repairable, I still have 3 unpopulated
> PCB panels, enough for 12 more boards before needing another PCB fab
> run - but I will need to do a thorough round of failure analysis with
> Technotronix before we assemble that next batch.
> 
> The next steps for me are:
> 
> * I need to add the new sleep mode configuration I mentioned before,
> the one that enables big and small sleep, but not deep sleep, for
> those users who would rather not be burdened with making their host
> interface software sleep-aware, and who are willing to live with
> greater power draw in return for interface simplicity - engineering is
> all about trade-offs and compromises.
> 
> * I need to test one of those 8 ohm 0.5 W speakers I bought from
> SparkFun and see if they perform as well as the similar-looking
> unknown-origin speaker that was donated to me by a member of my local
> LUG.  If these SparkFun speakers work well, I'll be able to recommend
> them as an official choice for FCDEV3B lab bench setups, otherwise I
> will have to go back on the hunt for a suitable speaker.
> 
> * I will need to write a sleep-aware userspace implementation of the
> GSM 07.10 MUX (which our FC modem supports) to serve as an exerciser
> for this feature of our modems, and add it to our FC host tools suite.
> 
> * Once all of the above are done, I will need to make an updated
> version of the user's manual for the FCDEV3B, and only then the
> current iteration of our modem product development will be considered
> complete.
> 
> * After all of the above, I will need to get back to the project of
> bringing up my BeagleBoard-xM and interfacing it to our FCDEV3B, for
> the purpose of exercising digital voice over MCSI and making it work.
> If anyone else has a need for this digital voice interface and has
> something else (othen than BB-xM) to connect to it for testing, feel
> free to beat me to it!
> 
> Hasta la Victoria, Siempre,
> Mychaela aka The Mother