Fen Logic Ltd.
Gertboard:
The Gertboard was the very first expansion board for the Raspberry-Pi. Development
and prototyping was all done in-house. The final production was done by a retail
company, in cooperation with their own manufacturing plant on a royalty basis.
The board was meant as a first step for programmers to get familiar with hardware and writing code to interact with it.
(For some reason somebody can write a beautiful fractal program and find the result 'booooring'.
But lighting a single LED using the computer makes them enthusiastic).
Before any hardware was developed, a learning plan was made which takes the user
step-by step through the very first stages of talking to the outside world:
- Output a signal (LED).
- Input a signal (push button)
- Read input and respond with output
- Drive a Bridge to control motors
- Talking to external chips
All the way up to:
- Programming and Interacting with an external micro controller.
For that same reason more then normal effort was put in the manual.
To stay in the educational spirit of the Raspberry-Pi the manual could be downloaded for free.
Gertduino:
The Gertduino was a follow up of the Gertboard. There where a lot people who wanted to do
more real-time controlling and the discussion Pi or Arduino was a hot topic on a daily basis.
Also the Arduino family offered a wide range of ready available plug-on boards which the
Raspberry-Pi did not have at that time.
The Gertduino is a Arduino compatible plug-on board which can be placed on top
of the Raspberry-Pi and also programmed from the Raspberry-Pi. Besides the standard
Arduino configuration it offered more buttons, LEDS and even a second Arduino chip
with a real time clock.
Just as with the Gertboard, the final production was done by a retail
company, in cooperation with their own manufacturing plant on a royalty basis.
BCM2836:
The director and owner of Fen Logic Ltd. was also the chip lead for the BCM2836,
the follow up chip for the Raspberry-Pi: the Raspberry-Pi 2.
In fact all the development of products show here where done in the evening hours and weekends,
alongside a day time job at Broadcom as Principal Senior ASIC engineer.
More information can also be found in the Gateware section.
Gertbot:
The Gertbot product.
Two stacked gertbots controlling 8 motors.
The Gertbot is a plug-on board for the Raspberry Pi which allows controlling
various types of motors.
For details see the website: www.gertbot.com
The Gertbot was completely developed and produced by Fen Logic.
The mass-production was done by a Chinese manufacturer.
These are the main steps involved:
- Product concept.
- Features selection and limitation.
- Component selection, mainly CPU and bridge drivers.
- Schematic entry prototype.
- PCB design prototype.
- Writing, testing & debug real-time embedded code.
- Writing, testing & debug development GUI.
- Assembly prototype.
- Re-design schematic final product.
- PCB design final product.
- Assembly prototypes final products.
- Updating, testing & debug real-time embedded code.
- Updating, testing & debug development GUI.
- Selecting Chinese manufacturer.
- Interfacing with Chinese manufacturer.
- Preparing manufacturing files (e.g. Pick and place coordinates).
- Schematic entry Test-jig.
- PCB design Test-jig.
- Writing, testing & debug Test-jig self test code.
- Writing self-test failure analysis manual.
- Writing, testing & debug Manufacturing self-test GUI.
- Arranging for EU EMC conformity testing.
- Arranging for EU ROHS certificate.
- Negotiating for EU WEEE directive.
- Applying for Registered Trademark.
- Arranging EU/UK import registration.
- Arranging packaging.
- Mechanical outfitting Test-jig.
- Writing manual.
- Writing, testing & debug Drivers for C.
- Writing, testing & debug Drivers for Python.
- Making You-tube instructions & advertise movies.
- Registering and and setting up webpage
- Adding & testing DCC (Digital model train) code extra feature.
- Programming and shipping first 1250 products.
Here are some related images:
Develop DCC code
User debug GUI
Test-jig
Arrival first batch
