A recent project that we manufactured were these lightweight low-cost wildlife tracking tags using integrated transceivers. The tags were designed by Sivan Toledo for use by the Minerva Center for Movement Ecology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, a center that focuses on measuring and understanding the movement patterns of wild animals.
Although not as popular nowadays, through-hole components were dominant for decades. IBM pioneered the through-hole part along with printed circuits and the technology of how to put leaded components through the circuit. Before this everything was all wire wound. Since the evolution of SMT technology has largely replaced the through-hole technology construction method, its popularity has gone way down and today are used mostly for making interconnections between board layers or when a stronger connection to the pcb is needed.
The fact that 55% of all Kickstarter campaigns in the hardware category since Kickstarter's inception in 2009 were launched in the past 12 months alone strongly suggests that many engineers are turning to crowdfunding as a way to fund and promote their hardware projects. As much as we love Kickstarter and the fantastic products it has brought us, we wanted to address some concerns specific to hardware campaigns.
If you've only ever purchased parts for low quantity prototype boards that you've hand soldered then you've probably never had to really worry about the issue of ordering components for wastage. When you're manufacturing at a mid or high level this is something essential to be taken into account to ensure that you get your boards on time.
During Andrew's recent visit to Worthington Assembly he was able to have a chat with CTO Chris Denney about the benefits of using the Mydata pick and place machine over older, more traditional machines. We were impressed with Chris' knowledge and wanted to share some of what we learned about what exactly makes the Mydata machine so great.
We're very excited about our partnership with Worthington Assembly, a Next Generation Manufacturer based in Massachusetts, known for their high level of customer service and eagerness to work with each customer on a personal level.
Chris Gammell, co-host of the Amp Hour, an electronics podcast, is launching a ten week learning and building program called Contextual Electronics. The program will help members build hardware from scratch by looking at design decisions, parts, components, how everything works and how to put it all together to create a product.
This past weekend we provided mentorship and technical support at the YC Hackathon, hosted by Upverter, along with some fellow YC alums from Pebble, Octopart, Lockitron, Double Robotics, and Boosted Boards.
CircuitHub will be providing mentorship and technical support at the Y Combinator Hardware Hackathon, hosted by Upverter, along with Pebble, Octopart, Lockitron, Boosted Boards, and Double Robotics.
