Although this week wasn’t busy for the CATS team, some big stuff happened. The hardware team’s work began to come together this week.
Thanks to Thor’s hard work, the brand new PCB design was finalized! We will order the new PCBs as soon as a new Mr. Bill of Materials is completed so that we can also order the new components we’ve picked out. In addition, the funding for our project was finally approved. This means that we can finally order a new RFID scanner for Maurice to play around with implementing. The new housing design was completed ahead of schedule by Stefan and Josh. We made an attempt to 3D print the housing but unfortunately our print failed after only a few hours.
The hardware team should be pretty busy over the next few weeks. Once the new PCBs arrive we will have to learn how to solder surface mount components and someone will be tasked with programming the EEPROM we implemented in order for our PCB to be called a PiHat. If we can order the new RFID scanner we want, Maurice will be busy for the next week or two getting the driver software in order to make it work. We will also be printing housings and laser cutting face-plates for our newest prototype.