Transfer period ends Friday, August 8

When the reorganization began, we announced that all donations that had been made to Golden Delicious Computers GmbH (GDC) and were subsequently transferred to Neo900 UG would retain the same benefits as the original donation, both regarding the original amount and the original date.

Since the reorganization is long over, it's time to also end this transfer period.
Therefore, all donations sent after Friday August 8, 2014 will be considered as "new".

This means that, if you still have a donation pending at GDC and have not asked for a transfer to Neo900 UG yet, you still have time to do so without losing any benefits.

Likewise, if you have requested a refund (to you) instead of a transfer to Neo900 UG, but wish to rejoin the project, then please transfer the refunded amount to Neo900 UG before the deadline.

Further details on transferring donations from GDC can be found here:
http://neo900.org/donate-gdc

Two examples:

1) If you donated EUR 200 in January and asked GDC to transfer the donation to Neo900 UG, we will have received about EUR 173.60 and we will treat this as a donation of EUR 200 made in January.

2) If you donated EUR 200 in January, have not decided yet, but will ask GDC in the middle of August - after the deadline - to transfer your donation to Neo900 UG, we will treat this as a donation of EUR 173.60 made in August.

- Werner (on behalf of the Neo900 team)

EUR 1500+ donations: "pioneering" period ends

As you will remember, donors who donated EUR 1500+ can ask for one prototype kit at their choosing, plus one final device. This is intended as a "pioneer" benefit for early supporters.

Since the pioneering days are long over, we want to update the conditions that will apply to future donations of EUR 1500+ or more.

For current donors, everything stays the same.
However, from now on donations of EUR 1500+ will still be good for a prototype kit, but will no longer include a final device.

Of course, no EUR 1500+ donor is obliged to ask for a prototype kit. Anyone who doesn't get a prototype kit will have their donation treated as a regular EUR 100+ donation.

Please note that prototypes will have to be requested before the prototype run since we can't be sure to have any spares. If you're interested in requesting a v2 prototype, please contact us at contact@neo900.org as soon as possible to discuss further details.

- Werner (on behalf of the Neo900 team)

So, when is the "prototype run" going to happen? What is the advantage of a prototype over a final device? And would a donation of 1600+ be good now for a prototype kit + a final device?
What is the difference between v2 prototype and v1 prototype?..
My apologies if it was asked-and-answered earlier.
Best wishes.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Per aspera ad astra...

Joerg and I prepared a white paper describing the planned infrared subsystem:

http://neo900.org/stuff/papers/ir.pdf

To a large part, this is a specification of what we'd like to have in the end, but there may still be changes if issues crop up. We expect to update the document from time to time as things settle down.

This specific version is at
http://neo900.org/stuff/papers/ir-20140827.pdf

The source can be found at
http://neo900.org/git/?p=misc;a=tree;f=ir

- Werner

Sorry for not replying earlier. I must have missed the notification :-( We don't have a date for the v2 prototype assembly yet. I wouldn't expect it to happen before late September, probably around the middle of October.

The excitement of having something long before others do ? :-)

The purpose of the current prototypes is to verify parts of the design. They aren't really meant for use outside the lab. E.g., v2 will have no CPU but a cable going to an external CPU board.

On the software side, v2 should already be useful for some amount of low-level work, e.g., driver development and/or testing.

Prototypes can also include additional components we need for experiments, and which will be removed later on. E.g., we'll experiment with the use of the 5 GHz ISM band on v2. That's something N900 didn't have, so we'll have to see whether we can still use the 2.4 GHz antenna, how well a chip antenna performs, and so on.

Later prototypes will be closer to what we actually want to have in the end, but the speed of that progress will also depend on how many problems we encounter along the way. E.g., if v2 works great, we can have an ambitious v3. On the other hand, if we encounter lots of issues in v2, we may want to dedicate the v3 run to fixing these before putting more on our plates.

A donation of EUR 1600 would get you the option to ask for a prototype and it would also imply that we'll include one more final device in our planning. It would, however, not cover the full cost of that final device (that is, unless you never request a prototype.)

v1 was mainly a collection of electromechanical items, with the goal of testing that things would actually be the right shape and end up at the right place in a N900 case. I joined the project long after v1, but as far as I know, it had only very limited electronic functionality.

v2 will have a lot more components. Except for the CPU and its immediate surroundings, most components will be on the board pair. The CPU is omitted this time since it is the most complex part and requires a more advanced and also more expensive PCB.

At the same time, we expect few surprises then it comes to the CPU since Neo900 aka GTA04b7 will largely reuse the proven design of GTA04A.

- Werner

Exciting news on the 5GHz WiFi testing, it will be very interesting to hear how this can be done. One of the main downsides of the N900 for me was the shared Bluetooth/WiFi antenna which required time division multiplexing when both were in use, switching was only just fast enough for most uses but came up short when streaming A2DP from an internet source. Being able to use 5 GHz WiFi on the N9 removed that multiplexing problem.

I am sure you will be testing for interference with all radios active at the same time but would like to request that you please can you measure the latencies of simultaneous A2DP Bluetooth audio from a source over WiFi.

Finally, does this mean you have settled on a WiFi chipset?

We've prepared a draft of a white paper describing the overall NFC ecosystem and what choices we have for NFC in Neo900:

http://neo900.org/stuff/papers/nfc-draft.pdf

This still needs some vetting and a few technical verifications, but it should give an idea of the general lay of the land and the direction we're taking. Once we've decided on a specific implementation, the no longer pertinent bits should be (re)moved and more details regarding that implementation added.

This specific version is at
http://neo900.org/stuff/papers/nfc-draft-20150105.pdf

The source can be found at
http://neo900.org/git/?p=misc;a=tree;f=nfc

- Werner

Joerg and I prepared a white paper describing the Hackerbus interface:

http://neo900.org/stuff/papers/hb.pdf

To a large part, this is a specification of what we'd like to have in the end, but there are still some details that will be defined later and there may be changes if issues crop up.
We expect to update the document from time to time as things settle down.

This specific version is at
http://neo900.org/stuff/papers/hb-20150225.pdf

The source can be found at
http://neo900.org/git/?p=misc;a=tree;f=hb

Since we design this device for you, we'd like to get comments. Please tell us if you're happy with this.

- Werner

We updated the white paper for the infrared subsystem:

http://neo900.org/stuff/papers/ir.pdf

The main changes:
- defined the placement of the IR diodes: section 5,
- changed the photodiode to VEMD10940F due to size constraints,
- defined (and simplified) the IR RX circuit: sections 2.6 and 9, and
- simplified and clarified the control inputs (e.g., bq.GPIO is all the receiver needs, and "CPU off" simply means that the whole system is powered down).

This specific version is at
http://neo900.org/stuff/papers/ir-20150314.pdf

The source can be found at
http://neo900.org/git/?p=misc;a=tree;f=ir

- Werner

We have a first prototype of the spacer frame. There are still a few small errors and missing features in the model, but by and large this is what we expect to use in the end.

First the ray-traced CAD model:
https://neo900.org/stuff/werner/spac...ray-traced.png

The blocks in the keyboard and display opening reduce the volume the CNC mill has to remove, making the milling faster. I'm using transparent acrylic. Next, the mill did its work:

https://neo900.org/stuff/werner/spac...-it-begins.jpg
https://neo900.org/stuff/werner/spac...ours-later.jpg
https://neo900.org/stuff/werner/spac...t-the-dust.jpg

After cleaning and a slight modification (there is one cut the mill can't make, so I did it manually) it looks like this:
https://neo900.org/stuff/werner/spac...th-key-mat.jpg

And this is what the whole assembly looks like:
https://neo900.org/stuff/werner/spac...-05-closed.jpg
https://neo900.org/stuff/werner/spac...er-06-open.jpg

If anyone wants to try it on their 3D printer, here is the STL:
https://neo900.org/stuff/werner/spacer/1/spacer.stl

And the scripts that generate the model in FreeCAD are here:
https://neo900.org/git/?p=misc;a=tree;f=spacer

- Werner