Thank you to everyone who attended the Makeathon at Cambridge Makespace on 3 August 2018. There were lots of interesting discussions and sketches of new ideas, and by the end of the day even a real-life induction-charging system.
Graduating from tape to cable tie: designing mounting systems
Before the Makeathon, the team were using tape to attach the hubs to their bikes, a rather cumbersome ‘solution’ to the mounting problem. During the Makeathon, many new ideas for the casing and mounting were suggested, and one brave volunteer took home a cable tie-attached sensor for a first test run.
A farewell to wires: the production of a printed circuit board
We’ve been designing a printed circuit board (PCB) for our sensor hub, which will allow us to pack all our different components into as little space as possible. Our PCB is technically a printed wiring board: the board contains plugs that fit the pins associated with each of our components, and copper wires within the board provide the right point-to-point connections between the plugs, allowing the components to interact in the right way. With the PCB, you will therefore be able to simply plug all components into place to assemble the system, and so there will no longer be a risk of the hub malfunctioning due to important wires coming loose!
