Ordering PCBs at WEdirekt

WEdirekt is sponsoring the manufacturing of the first batch of PCBs, which is a real great help for us. Thank YOU !!!

The following Video documents the process of ordering PCBs on WEdirekt’s Online-Shop:

(Local-) Community support for machining the housing

Yesterday I went to meet Johann, who jumped in to help in getting the mechanical work done for the OggStreamer-housing. He is a sympathic helpful guy, working as a school teacher in a mechanical Workshop and therefore has access to the needed tools. We first meet at the Open Technology Labratory, when I was organizing an Arduino-Workshop.

For my person i am not very fimilar with the possible processes of producing all those holes needed for the connectors, buttons, knobs, LEDs, etc… My first guess was Laser-Cutting (maybe because we are experimenting with 3D-Printers latley, and Laser-Cutting is also well discussed in this scene). I still don’t know if it is possible – but Alu, due to its matieral properities needs quite a high performance laser to do the cutting … But after the talk yesterday i noticed that there are other options too. Well, for the round holes drilling is the obvious way. But what to do with all those squares? I didn’t know till now but one way is CNC Punching. (Youtube Video).

Thank you Johann for supporting this Project.

Mechanics (almost) finished

The mechanics are almost finished – the only thing missing is the design of the lightguide for VU-,OnAir- and Power-LED.

You can download the Sketchup-File from Sourceforge here

500g of pure transparent PLA

The friendly people from the German Reprap Foundation (short: grrf) – contributed half a kilo of tranparent PLA, which is a plastic material made out of starchy plants. We are going to use this PLA Filment on our Prusa Mendel 3D Printer in the OTELO (the Open Technology Labaratory), to produce the light guides of the VU-Meter, On-Air and PowerLED for the OggStreamer.

Thank you Jan & Florian @ grrf.de

Videointroduction of PCBs

Short introduction to the PCBs of the OggStreamer, which just got completed a couple of hours ago 🙂

PCB-Design Files published!

Today we have published the design files for the OggStreamer – which you can find on sourceforge: https://sourceforge.net/p/oggstreamer/pcb-design/

The design was done with PCAD 2006 – so you might need a viewer to have a look at the files. The Viewer can be downloaded here.

We used PCAD 2006, because it was the only feasible option for us to use at time we started the project. But we would be very happy if somebody could translate this Files to an OpenSource EDA-Tool like KiCad or gEDA

New Supporter: Barix

Yes. We’ve got another supporter and for this one I am especially enchanted. The name of the company is Barix, and they are specialized in producing audio-streaming devices. Their quality streaming solutions – like for example the Instreamer 100 is used by a number of radiostation I know personally. So if you need a streaming solution with an out-of-the-box experience they are an excellent option.

And they agreed to the following: They are willing to sponsor one OggStreamer to the OpenHardware-Community. So basically they are paying for one device that we can give away for free to a commited developer or to a free radiostation. And by buying this unit they further support the production of the first batch of devices. 🙂 How cool is that?

 

What about an OggStick?

The OggStreamer-Project is intended to be a quality product, but sometimes and for some applications the costs of a device should be really low. So I want to write down my Ideas how an OggStick could look like.

The OggStick could be a USB-Stick device, which is capturing analog audio and compresses it into digital ogg/vorbis. It is plugged into a cheap USB-enabled WLAN-Router, which is running OpenWRT (or a similar Linux) together with an IceCast2-Server. This Device would also have the advantage, that it could use WLAN for streaming …

The Hardware consists of three Parts:

1. A FTDI232 USBtoSeriall Converter
2. A STM8S uC
3. A VS1053 AudioDSP

And it would be connected as follow:

(USB) <=> FTDI232 <=> STM8 <=> VS1053 <= Microphone/LineIn

Such a device would just transmit the plain ogg-file on the usb serial-port (like /dev/ttyUSB0). The Software for such an device is almost identical with the already published STM8 Firmware on Sourceforge. So the Software-Part would take maybe a day of work.

BUT: This task is not for me. I got already enough work to do. So if somebody is interested in developing this small PCB, you can “copy&paste” a lot from the OggStreamer-Schematics and Firmware and I can offer you to assist you with such a project.

First Video Blog ;)

Hello Everybody – Starting from yesterday night i tried to post a Videoblog introducing the OggStreamer-Device. I had a hard time trying to upload a recordmydesktop-Ogg Video to vimeo … puhh – so i made several attempts and settled with an unedited version – with some glitches at the beginning – sorry for that. Next week I want to do a small Video introducing the PCB and the Schematics of this Project.

New Supporter: WEdirekt

Today i am very happy to announce that WEdirekt is supporting this Project as well. WEdirekt is Würth Electronics PCB and Stencil Manufacturing-division. They agreed to sponsor this Project by producing the PCBs for the first Batch of devices, which is very kind of them. In past me and friends of mine already used their first-class PCB-Service for a number of projects. We used their service for example to manufacture 50 pcs. of Sanguinololus (thanks Joem, this way) and distributed them to a number of RepRap-builders all around. Back then we were very pleased with the quality of the PCBs and so WEdirekt was my first choice when looking for PCB manufacture for this Project. Luckily they agreed to support us 😉 Many thanks to the WEdirekt-Team.