Power Up and Analogue Signal Tests

We are well on the way in terms of th FLITES project data acquisition systems. I've been working exclusively on the firmware and embedded software for these boards,, however my collegues have been testing these boards both in terms of power and in terms of the analogue sections of the signal chain (pre-ADCs).

So the good news, despite no prototypes, the boards all work right out of the box. We have a yield of approx 90% in terms of power and approx 95% in terms of channel yields.

I've been testing the firmware and software on one of these boards for a few months now, but its good to see our large batch of boards workds correctly.

In the top image, the secondary mezzanine board is shown. This grabs analogue and difital power from the main board and creates three further supplies. One is the fan power supplies for the colling of the enclosure, the second and third are low noise split pos/neg 5V rails for the pre-amplifiers that connect to this board.

So far, so good.

It is a testiment to superb manufacturing that we get such a high yield. Thanks must go to all those 3rd parties involved:

• Premier EDA - Supplied us with Altium Designer with a 2 year sponsorship of the FLITES project

• Cad Energy - Helped with the Hub boards layout

• Zot - Helped with fabrication of the PCBs and population of the Hubs

• Edinburgh technician Iain Gold - Helped with in-house population of the pre-amp power mezzanine boards

Thats all for now,

All the best.