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Posts: 79 | Thanked: 719 times | Joined on May 2014 @ Buenos Aires, Argentina
#5
Originally Posted by Wikiwide View Post
So, when is the "prototype run" going to happen?
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.

What is the advantage of a prototype over a final device?
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.

And would a donation of 1600+ be good now for a prototype kit + a final device?
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.)

What is the difference between v2 prototype and v1 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
 

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