#startupcph

[sensorist]

Antenna Calibration

During our design process we have discussed and gone through trials and tribulations, trying different hardware designs and solutions and qualifying them on a lot of parameters fx. cost, battery life, ease of production and so on.

This is done in a radio room with a lot of RF test equipment and with prototype board and the important part is the length of the antenna. We started with some prototype PCBs of our Sensor and Gateways, where the antenna layout was as long as space permitted. We started measuring the power emitting from the antenna and then began removing 1 mm at a time from the antenna. We started to see performance getting better and better and recorded the results along the way. We continued until the performance started degrading. This gave us our ideal antenna length and below is a before and after shot of one of our sensors.

And why is this important? We want you to be able to use our sensors even if your house or garden is large without have to worry about range, like you often need to when using fx, WIFI.

Before:

After:

These learnings of ideal antenna length were then implemented into the Gerber files defining our final PCB layout. 

[mjlgrd]

We are taking a team day out - replacing office with the water in the harbour of Copenhagen

[sensorist]

Factory build getting closer

As we wrote earlier our factory is now working on fabricating the injection mold tools for all the plastic parts of our gateway and sensors. They are doing great and the tooling is coming along nicely. The schedule so far will give us what is called first-out-of-tool on August 10'th.

First-out-of-tool is the manufacturing lingo for when the molding tools, for the first time, are mounted in the injection molding machines - and the first enclosures can be made. So far all of our enclosures were made with a 3D printer, and while 3D printing has come along way, the quality and especially the surface quality, is nowhere near what the final product will look like. We are looking forward to getting our hands on the first real production samples - like children on Christmas eve!

[sensorist]

Setting expectations

As we wrote in an earlier blog post we are fortunate enough to participate in the Danish startup program Accelerace.

We just received an email from them where they explain how they want to use surveys as part of the program.

But as everyone knows "fill out our survey" emails often end up in the trash. They can be annoying - you always have something better to do.

But the way Accelerace handles this is super cool. Read for yourself what they wrote us:

[sensorist]

Production start in 中华人民共和国

Things are really progressing at the moment. Even though all of our products are thought out and designed here in Copenhagen/Denmark they will be manufactured in China - to get the final products at the best possible price.

This means that right now our Chinese factory are hard at work getting the tooling ready that is needed for the injection molding of our device enclosures/casing.

The last of the tools we have in production is a mold for a button. We use the same button on both the Gateway and the Sensor - the button is being used when initially pairing the units. Its made from Silicone and not hard plastic as the rest - but a dedicated tool is still needed.

Part of the actual scheduling plan of the tooling is shown below.

And in case you still wonder what 中华人民共和国 means? It means Peoples Republic of China.

[sensorist]

Sensorist joining Accelerace Fall 2013

More than 400 companies were screened, more than 170 ended up applying and 30 ended up getting selected to join the danish accelerator program Accelerace for their Fall '13 program. We are happy and proud to be one of those.

Read more about the Accelerace program at http://accelerace.dk