Apple | simrhino

🇺🇸 Based hardware manufacturing nerd. running sim rhino (pcb, enclosures, box build). dms open if you're stuck on your first production run

[Apple | simrhino @SimRhino]

@sanjay_ganesh18 a cots fc is the easy part until the wiring isn't, most of the pain is usually esc noise getting into the gyro and uart pin mixups, soft-mounting the fc and keeping power leads short and twisted fixes a lot of it

[Apple | simrhino @SimRhino]

@AsherNoble20109 no shame at all, before the next rev check the motor driver traces can handle stall current and put a bulk cap right at the driver, both fingers kicking at once is usually what browns out the mcu on boards like this

[Apple | simrhino @SimRhino]

@Alacritic_Super this is why a cheap imu earns its spot, encoders tell you how much the wheels turned and the gyro tells you how much the robot actually rotated, when they disagree you've found your slip, just mount it rigid and away from motor vibration

[Apple | simrhino @SimRhino]

@Baconbrix @bot rate of rise makes a better alarm than absolute temp, a regulator climbing fast is the real smoke warning, also shiny metal like heatsinks and shields reads colder than it is on thermal, a dot of kapton on the spots you care about fixes it

[Apple | simrhino @SimRhino]

@IlirAliu_ the camera is usually the slowest of the three, driver, lane config, exposure and timestamps all have to line up before you get one useful frame, picking a module that already has a known-good driver for your compute board saves days

[Apple | simrhino @SimRhino]

@DanKornas 100%, a photo of the first assembled board sitting in the enclosure catches stuff no drc will, if the tool prompted for that before export it would close the loop nicely

[Apple | simrhino @SimRhino]

@rahularepaka @HarvestedLabs makes sense, sealed box plus a heatsink plate is the cleanest way to hold the ip rating, one thing to watch on tractor power is load dump and cranking dips, a tvs and a wide-input regulator up front saves the daq from random resets

[Apple | simrhino @SimRhino]

@VectorCrossProd 177/177 is solid! i'd love to see it on a 4-layer board with a couple of diff pairs and a tight bga fanout, that's usually where autorouters start to struggle

[Apple | simrhino @SimRhino]

@glauberxyz i run a small us-based manufacturing service (pcb assembly, camera modules, box build) so i think about this a lot. the bare boards are honestly the easy part, it's assembly setup and getting parts in hand at low quantities that slows small labs down

[Apple | simrhino @SimRhino]

@Magicred_1 @finagotchi @superteamIE @formacity congrats, that's the fun stage! for the printed enclosure, model it around a real assembled board instead of just the cad, since connector heights never quite match. also test heat-set inserts on one print first, bosses crack more than you'd expect

[Apple | simrhino @SimRhino]

@open_erv bowl + plug and filling before closing is a really smart way to beat bubbles. one thing worth tracking early: pulls per silicone mold. tin-cure molds wear out over time, so keep the sla master in good shape and you can re-pour a fresh mold instead of reprinting

[JosephZhou @openmys]

As an AI hardware founder in Shenzhen, I sift through tons of smart devices daily. Most of them are pure noise.

So I spent the last 2 months putting together almost every single AI hardware project on the market that is actually worth seeing.

Click into any product to get its official website + GitHub repo.

Enjoy! 👇

[Apple | simrhino @SimRhino]

@openmys bookmarked. 👈🏻👈🏻👈🏻would love a column for which ones are actually shipping vs still on preorder. that gap between working demo and first production batch is where most hardware stalls

[Apple | simrhino @SimRhino]

@AlphonseJReitz classic rev 2 problem. what helps: export the board outline + mounting holes as a step from your ecad and build the mount off that. next rev you just re-import and the mount follows the board instead of re-measuring

[Apple | simrhino @SimRhino]

@gwillallen those round boards look great. are they getting potted or sitting in a sealed housing? for anything going underwater, sealing the cable exits usually ends up being as much work as the board itself

[Apple | simrhino @SimRhino]

@micmakarov love this. one gotcha if you start trusting absolute temps: shiny metal (heatsinks/shields) reads way colder than it really is on thermal because of low emissivity. a dot of kapton tape or matte black paint on the spots you care about fixes it. what camera are you streaming from?

[Apple | simrhino @SimRhino]

@Aluminumovercst very usual lol. for boards like this a stencil + paste + a cheap hot plate gets you most of the way. or next spin, let the fab assemble the smd side and just hand solder the through-hole headers yourself. that's the biggest time saver

[Apple | simrhino @SimRhino]

@Compilethings @VectorCrossProd congrats on the first board 🎉 before you hit order: print the layout 1:1 on paper and drop the real connectors + module on it to sanity-check footprints. and if any pcie/usb3/hdmi lanes run on this board, ask the fab for controlled impedance on the stackup you routed for.