Awkward Engineer - Blog

Bus Sign Progress

by Sam Feller

Bus Sign Progress

I made great progress on the bus stop sign this week. In short, I have a fully functioning prototype. It now "works like" what a finished product w...

New Project: Single Purpose Hardware Bus Stop Sign

by Sam Feller

New Project: Single Purpose Hardware Bus Stop Sign

Hi all! I'm working on a new project right now, an installation piece for my living room that I'm calling the Bus Stop Sign. The plan is to use the...

The Mini Newspaper Project

by Sam Feller

The Mini Newspaper Project

Many of you know I'm a big proponent of "S.T.E.A.M.", namely Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math. The "Art" is often the most important...

The How and Why of Organizing Your Hardware Design Project's Digital Files

by Sam Feller
This blog post is based on by own experiences organizing and managing a hardware design project for small teams with the goal of reaching small bat...

Introducing the AWK-106

by Sam Feller

Introducing the AWK-106

I promised that I'd have something new this week and here it is... the AWK-106 Flying Fun Plane! For now, it is a set of 100% free and open source ...

White House Maker to Manufacturer Summit

by Sam Feller

White House Maker to Manufacturer Summit

I'm at the airport, waiting to fly down to Washington D.C. for a Maker to Manufacturer summit at the White House, about what startups, entrepreneur...

Embedded Multitasking on the AWK-105AL Alarm Clock

by Sam Feller

Embedded Multitasking on the AWK-105AL Alarm Clock

In this blog post, we'll a bit about the multitasking code that allows the Alarm Clock to tell time, check if the alarm should sound, beep on and off, etc, all at the same time.

The Franken-Test-Rig

by Sam Feller

The Franken-Test-Rig

We work really closely with our assembly facility (they're about a 2 hour drive from our office, so they're local-ish), and with their help, we reduced the field failure rate on meters from about 2.5% on the first production batch of Clocks to about .6% on batch #2. (If you're one of the unlucky few with a bad meter, let us know, we repair/replace at no charge).

Most issues were traced to debris from a wire brush used for cleaning parts at the meter factory (we think they passed testing at the point of origin and debris dislodged and jammed the mechanism in shipping) and now we run a more sophisticated component screening test at our facility.

Olive Voltmeter Clock Production and Quality Improvements

by Sam Feller

Olive Voltmeter Clock Production and Quality Improvements

Hey Everyone, It's time for an update on the Voltmeter Clocks. The bare sheet metal cases were delivered last week to our powder coating house. I ...

Surface Mount Prototyping

by Sam Feller

Surface Mount Prototyping

A big theme with this board is designing for flexibility. For example, depending on our supply chain, the buzzer might be soldered directly to the circuit board as a surface mount component, it may have short lengths of wire called “flying leads” that get soldered to the board, or the wires might have a connectorized plug on the end. We’ve designed in the various “footprints” on the board so that we can adapt to what’s available.

Awkward (Engineer) Valentines and the Cutest Story Ever

by Sam Feller

Awkward (Engineer) Valentines and the Cutest Story Ever

Hey Everyone, We just released a new feature to the Awkward Engineer Store. Gift cards! A lot of customers requested them and now they're available...

Adding USB Power to the AWK-105

by Sam Feller
Many people requested USB power and back lighting for the clock. We didn’t want our SKU’s exploding with combinatorial options, but we did want to ...