Hi, it's industry storytime because people say they'd like to hear industry stories. So I found this in the bunk of the other day. Check it out! I I've probably shown this before somewhere along the line, but anyway I thought I'd tell you the story of this. what the hell is it and how did it come to be? because it's a rather interesting tale of a last-minute design scramble for a trade show.

So as you know, I used to work at Dumb Altium So this is back in 2007 Now We had already released the Altium Nb2 Nano board back in early 2007 I believe it was and I'm not sure how long it was for sale at the time, but anyway, that was sort of like the previous year's big release. you know? So it was a development board because our team were getting into FPGAs that was their vision and it was a development board that had plug-in FPGAs You could get all different vendor FPGAs and then all these peripheral boards that you could plug on and do different things you know, audio/video interfaces HDMI GSM and I/o and all sorts of stuff you could just plug in, had a little LCD on it and everything else and it was actually a ridiculously expensive development board. Here's the press release from September 9th 2008 So this is a year later when were they decided to bomb sell it via digi-key and they're at in price 4003 bargain price of $4,300 although it did actually come with the like. a strict out version of our team design that allowed you to do all FPGAs and everything else.

You got a license and all that sort of stuff. famously turning the world of electronics design upside down where PCB the PCB module in our team was optional extra. Yep, you bought the Nano board because that was our team's vision as that you wouldn't need to design your own boards. why would you need a design on boards Because you could just use all these custom boards.

This is the end of 2007 2008 about to roll around and the big conference in Silicon Valley was coming up the big trade show design Condor 2008 and of course our team had to have the biggest and baddest stand there and here it is what it ultimately turned into. but we'll get into that. So they wanted something new to show off and new concept you know I couldn't just show the Nano board again. So they came up with the concept I think probably McMartin He came up with all he drove everything at the time CEO of our founder and CEO and came up with the idea for the industrial nano board where you know like the NB to nano board was like just a desktop development type thing.

But of course the vision was that you could like buy all these off-the-shelf boards. you could develop it on your desktop version and then just plug them into this industrial version and just plug it on the wall. So the idea was that it would be more industrial like and here's a 3d model of it and it had the same same peripheral boards on here. So here we go.

these peripheral boards and it had the whereas it you know it had, its like a more industrial type I LCD on it and stuff like that. and but it was fully compatible with the desktop so you can take the modules off there, whack him in and a head. like a bit like a proper industrial enclosure with panels you could get cables in and out of and and grommets and all that. You know all that sort of jazz it was powered from.

you know external power suppliers like industrial power supplies and stuff like that and you know it was a decent idea. But the problem was is that they came up with this idea in December 2007 and the design Kancho which they wanted to show this off at was like the end of January I think maybe like the 1st of February or something but we had to get this done by. It was like I don't know. Early to mid December at this point and we had basically a month and a bit to get this or not only designed from scratch but actually then the manufactured prototype manufactured assembled enough that we had could show off at the design Con booth.

And who got stuck with the design of the PCB for this puppy? Not just one but two different versions of it and so this is what it turned out to be. But anyway, this was a very tight timeframe. Get all this done with Christmas in there as well. Christmas in New Year's when you know a lot of companies shut down and you can't get parts delivered and you know all sorts of issues.

But anyway, so I started frantically working on the design of the this industrial Nanna board and thankfully the Altium design system was really good because we already had like you know that like a lot of the blocks, all the schematic blocks and parts blocks and everything else so it came together rather quickly. but you know it was in an entire design from scratch and this is a this is what an eighth layer job' here I Won't go into too much detail, but anyway I managed to get together this one that plus another version which was basically the same thing but it was like a different form factor. They wanted to have multiple form factors so two boards plus a display board and everything else that had to all come together before the tradeshow. so I can.

oh there's a bug it doesn't like that does it? Oops. So this is the industrial Nano board design that I came up with in consultation with the mechanical engineer at the time who was designing all the enclosures and case and did all the you know 3d modeling stuff and things like that. So I remember vividly working on Christmas Eve and in the out him building there were only two people left myself and Nick Martin cuz Nick Martin was like always there I think he lived there so ain't I bugger this it's Christmas Eve I'll go back home and I'll work remotely because we had like a remote desktop interface. it was really difficult for the time to do but I used out him at home but I could you know get the files and everything remotely? so I thought I'd go home, finish and bugger off home finish the design.

and so it was like late at night on Christmas Eve and I needed to order some parts so that we could have them from far Nels or wherever or digi-key or winner so that we could have the parts you know straight away and I had forgotten my company credit card. it was back at the office halfway across. Sydney So I thought I wonder if Nick's still there Nikhil still be there. Sure enough, contact him.

yep he's still there. He went to the this is like you know, midnight or something on Christmas Eve it's just nuts anyway. so he goes over to my desk, gets me my cream, reads me my credit card numbers. yeah we're saved.

We able to order the parts. so anyway that was just nuts like on Christmas Eve Anyway, um I think we just got the parts before Korea or early New Year's or something like that Anyway, I was frantically finishing the design of these boards off but then in like early to mid January or something we only got like a couple of weeks left. They're still designing the stands and everything else and they got the idea from you know the slogan seeing is believing but touching is more fun. We had t-shirts with like always like with this fun on the back of probably still got bunch of t-shirts Anyway, we already had the Nb2 desktop which we could show off as well and we had the industrial Nano board and here it is.

Here was the final solution down here in the two different form factors and you could join them together. It was really quite neat from a mechanical aspect and stuff like that. But then they said oh they wanted to show a third step where we you know you could do your own custom boards if you wanted to. So Nick said you know Dave give me a custom board something that looks custom II and I I went well.

what does that mean? Like we've got no time left like we've got like a day to do it or something like that. so I'll scratch in my head for a while and like I think I maybe came up with a couple of ideas and he didn't like him and stuff like that and then I don't know well like we've just got to like take the existing design, don't have time to design something brand-new and so I came up with the idea to take the existing design and just make it look funky. so instead of our tea and black we'll make it red and I decided decided to make it curved like this right and then had these big like shock mounts on here like ant like vibration any vibration mounts and it was just one of the most ideas ever but it was like you know it looked kind of funky and Nick loved it and said yeah let's go with that so we had to. So I basically had the design I just had to you know make it all funky and stuff like this So I got this emergency rush assembled like I'm talking like 24 hour proto's as we did with the other ones.

I'm eight layer board. We got these turned in 24 hours. don't ask the price if you have to ask the price you can't afford it I am to get a board like this spun in 24 hours. So we've got these made and they look really funky.

but then we had to get them assembled and of course like there's a 402. You know, lots of Oh 402 parts on there and stuff like that. and there's big, you know, 600, 700, pin 670 something pin BGA and you know all sorts of stuff So we could have done it by hand but we actually decided like we needed a bunch of these. we need a like you know, six of them or something, half a dozen or something like that.

So we rushed assembly job. once again pain absolute top dollar because when you either go to a PCB house to get something like this 24 hour prototyped or whether or not you go to an assembler and say hey, I need my boards assembled today? start programming and pick-and-place machine I Need this damn thing done? They'll go sure, but we're going to charge you like five times the normal price or whatever it is because they have to then bump all the other jobs and well you know the other customers aren't going to be happen so they want to be compensated for that so it costs a lot of money. Anyway, we've got these assembled and we got him back in like a couple of day like it was nuts. the the timeline was just absolutely insane on this thing.

and what do you know? all of the parts on here like the all of the like Oh 402s where is it there or the Oh 402s and and stuff like that, they ought to mooned all the chips or not all them. but yeah, I probably was they all flipped up like this because as part of the industrial look and feel I went for a double thickness border. so a 3.2 millimeter board instead of your standard 1.8 and it's 8 layer board. It's got all ground planes all in there so this actually retains a ton of heat.

When you put it through the reflow oven, you know you do the pick in place and then it goes along. The conveyor belt goes into the multi-stage reflow oven and solders the parts on and I think they goofed it up or something and they didn't. They had the wrong temperature profile for it they like it was for a 1.6 Miller being aboard and this thing retained all the heat much higher. So even though the surface mount components on here had thermal reliefs and we can see that.

So even though all the parts have thermal relieves on them and as you can see here, right, we shouldn't they shouldn't have. You know, like you know, tombstone right because they're not connecting directly connected to the ground plane. But because the the board was so massive and had so much copper in it retained so much heat and they goofed the profile and it didn't cool down at the correct rate. and then the one pad cools down quicker than the other one and then Boop it flips up anyway.

Screw them all up. So there was last-minute frantic effort to go and rework all these old 402 parts to get them back down. Anyway, we finally got this done. We got them assemble because they have to work.

They wanted them on the stand to actually work and there's the final product working down there and it was like a GSA Was it a GSM app? No, that one was just displaying a slideshow but we needed it to actually do stuff whereas the one up here had like a GSM module down in here and you could like SMS a thing and it would pop up. you know it would pop up on the screen and stuff like that. So yeah, so that was the that was the you know the stand that they wanted to have and we needed to set up multiple ones of this. but it wasn't over yet.

Of course it was once again a frantic last-minute effort to not only get all these designed, assembled, the software, tested the software, written the apps, you know, tests and all that sort of stuff. and then the design people were working on these display boards and things like that for the stand and you know how all that was going to go together. and but in the cases, these industrial type cases here we didn't have like the injection molding cases yet these were just like prototypes. So I think they were all hand-finished out of fiberglass are all like hand.

I Know we didn't like that some shop did it or something. so all these and don't fret though, really fragile. apparently these hand done fiberglass shells and everything and like I think if you breathed on them they would break or something like that. But we had to have something to show off at the Design Con show because it was the big show of the year you know and it was.

There's a lot of company prestige and and there's a lot of press around it and you know things like that. So we got these fiberglass shells assembled so though extremely fragile and we had to get them so I don't know where though I We had them made but we had to get them shipped to our Tiems headquarters at that time in Carlsbad in near down near us San Diego in California and so we got them all rush shipped there so we had to all fly over there with our tested boards and everything else but we had to like fit them inside these cases and everything and I don't think though I painted or something. they weren't painted and they weren't sanded down or something so the Altium HQ over there it calls back. We had to like a nice and a more down and finish and make them all look nice and you know, ready for the show, install the boards and stuff like that but as it turns out they were too fragile to just you know throw in a crate and just ship him there cuz you know these companies are notoriously bad.

It's like handling this sort of stuff. So we had to get and we had like dozens and dozens of these they like and lots in that we had to carefully pack into boxes. So the boxes were big with all the bubble wrap and there's no way we could get all this stuff on a plane or you know, anything like that. So we thought right, well hire a van.

So he hired a van, stuffed it all full of you know, full to the brim with all these boxes. Wore the tradeshow stuff and myself and the mechanical engineer went right. We have to get like there's a day left or something and we've got to drive up to from like basically San Diego up to Silicon Valley at the one Convention Center where ever it was. the San Jose Convention Center wasn't and so we took a road trip up.

the I was quite a nice road trip actually. thanks for asking. And anyway we managed to get there in on time and but it wasn't over yet. We had to get all this sort of stuff assembled, tested on the tradeshow stand.

and if you've ever done a tradeshow stand, you know it never is ever done early. So like the doors were open like 10 a.m. or something and like five minutes to 10:00 we're under the benches. you know what are in stuff ups, still screwing things together and going.

Hope it all works, We power it all up and like people aren't wet, we're still doing that as people are like walking onto the stand. But we got it done. So there you go. That was the there it is.

the custom nano board and like here's an ego, there's Nick and former CEO at the time Emily Russo Yeah, that's another story. She didn't agree with the company vision. let's just put it that way and you know there's fun people wear this. You know, just a random person playing with the playing with the board and you know it was one of the demos that we had up because it looks funky on the screen.

And the 3d modeling. you know, back in 2008, you know, 2007-2008 the 3d modeling thing was, you know, really innovative and novel and stuff like that. So a tower for trying to flog our $4,000 development board and these industrial enclosures as you saw. but and there's someone I forget who that is.

but I'm just in the middle of setting up the stand. What was that packing up I'm not sure. Anyway, we managed to get it done at the last minute so it was frantic and I worked all over Christmas and New Year and like just absolutely flat out I think I took like half of Christmas Day Off family that was frantic and yeah, I managed to get all the two different industrial designs done. Plus this shocked me was called the Shock.

It's you know, the Nb2 Shock version and it was complete wanker II right? But we did like we just needed something that looked custom. Yeah and everyone thought it was great so you know. and yeah. anti-vibration feet I thought that was a great idea.

blank PCB whatever. Yeah, it worked and it wasn't much. You know it's like an hour's design effort to actually design that when you already have the rest of it, you know it's really. it's not hard at all.

but yeah, all that had to come together. Three different designs and well, yeah, there was three or four different boards plus enclosure design and everything else in like I was probably a month and month and a half tops. Absolutely crazy. But we managed to get it together and it all worked on the display stand and everyone was happy.

But whatever happened to the industrial version? Well I don't quite remember but I'm not sure if we actually took any orders for, but it just I don't know. Somehow, just the concept died away. Um, and we we I don't think we ever actually sold the industrial version. It was actually kind of neat, but once again, it was ridiculously expensive.

just like the NB to Nano board which was like four thousand dollars. and when we eventually tried to sell it a digi-key even when we have the price to like two thousand dollars, it's still the world's most expensive development board. and it didn't sell diddly-squat as was much discussed in the community. The Altium design community at the time and stuff like that eventually did come out with the NB 3000, which was like a $300 development board and that one actually sold in reasonable numbers are that was part of the turning their world of electronics design upside down when they made the PCB design module optional extra I think Anyway, so there you go.

That is the history of the this doodad. It's funky little, but it really worked. and it was on the tradeshow as one of those last-minute scramble things. And if you ever get invited to be on a tradeshow stand, don't do it.

Don't do it. it's it's so destroying. I Think well on a trade show standard, you'll just be buggered by the end of it. By the way.

I forgot to mention during all of this while I was staying at the Hilton in Carlsbad in California near our THQ there like the first day I got food poisoning. It was the worst food poisoning I've ever had in my entire life. So the rest of the two-week trip or however long it was I basically ate nothing and when I got back everyone just looked at me I went what the hell happened to you and it's like yeah, I was I almost didn't eat a theme for two weeks. it just it was awful.

So yeah, that wasn't a pleasant trip after you know, a frantic month of designing all this sort of stuff and these trade shows stories, they're often always the same. I Always in the belief that engineer do their absolute best when they have a real hard deadline like you have to do it that trade shows happening. We've booked the Stand where all the stuff is. You know, desire.

We need the the desktop. We need the industrial version working. We need this custom version working. That's all done.

It has to be done and engineers just magically get it done on time. It's amazing when you have a really strict deadline and it's checked. You know, even though we had hiccups in assembly and we had software hiccups and I think the software was still being tweaked at like the last minute. even on the tradeshow stand, it was still being tweaked and bugs being worked out.

and you know all sorts of stuff like that. So, but it gets done and it's amazing what you can do when you have a deadline anyway. hope you enjoyed that story if you please. Did give it a thumbs up.

And if you've got a like a frantic last-minute design story like that, leave it in the comments or over on the EEV blog forum. Catch you next time.