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Hardware development status

A project log for The Mail Beacon

It is a bluetooth mailbox monitor. You’ll receive notifications when letters or parcels are added to your box.

robertRobert 05/09/2017 at 17:150 Comments

Hi Guys,
Recent time was hard due to our new campaign of AmbiVision 4k (if you want to support us: http://igg.me/at/ambivision4K).

The Smartphone app is ready except smart networking. We want to use firebase as database but it is not easy for rookies. Especially make it secure and easy in implementation (custom auth require external server). Any advice will be appreciated.

The Beacons is finished, but some hardware changes are required. The 16 MHz crystal needs a specific capacitors to make Bluetooth device visible. We need to use different one with external capacitors (now we use crystal with internal capacitors). Very strange for me, was range in fully metal mailbox with some holes. It seems to
work well despite on the metal box.

Development of a detection algorithm took a lot of time to make it stable and reliable. Finally it works well in 99% cases.

Today I will show you how the PCB (0.2 mm) looks now. We need to change the 16MHz crystal. Soon we will send the project for Nordic to advice us how to design a proper antenna.

Cheers!


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