HT-15 Update: RF Board Complete, Mechanical Tweaks, Firmware Progress

HT-15 Update: RF Board Complete, Mechanical Tweaks, Firmware Progress

Good morning everybody, I realized that it has been a while since our last update so I just want to summarize what work we have done over the holiday season!

We were not able to get as much done over the past couple of months as I would have liked; primarily due to workload at our primary (money-making) jobs, combined with vacations, being sick on and off for the past two months, etc.

Without further ado:

RF Module Design Complete and Under Review:

 

Mechanical Design Changes:

  • The primary change to the plastics is changing the previous dual front facing miniature speakers to a better quality/larger round speaker that will be rear facing. This change was done because the assembly/disassembly process was too tight and finicky with the front facing speakers, and the rear speaker will be louder, clearer and have a flatter frequency response.

  • Added a rear plastic PCB cover. It holds the speaker, protects sensitive components, and makes it much more user-friendly when swapping batteries or modules.

Firmware Status

We've shifted focus to the software side and are porting key libraries to the native Pico SDK (moving away from Arduino entirely).

Key decisions so far:

  • Writing in pure C (following the Pico SDK / RP2350 ecosystem convention) instead of C++.

  • Spent way too many hours wrestling with the TI TLV320AIC31xx audio codec just to get a simple beep working as our "hello world." If you've ever configured this chip successfully — especially on Pico/RP2040/RP2350 — please drop me a line; I'd really appreciate any pointers.

I was really hoping to have a basic display + audio demo running by now, but we're not quite there yet. Getting the display and audio paths functional is our top priority over the next few weeks.

Thanks for your continued support — more to come soon!

Best,

Ben

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