A Sneak Peak at Berets (Oct 2021)
Channel: Thomas Bewley
Date: 2021-10-13

Berets are open-design carrier boards for power regulation and motor control.  A comprehensive datasheet is being developed as chapter 5 of Renaissance Robotics, a draft of which is available (along with other info) at:   http://robotics.ucsd.edu/rr.html

Berets can be used as both daughterboards for the popular single-board computers available today, like the Raspberry Pi and the Qualcomm RB5, and in stand-alone settings, significantly streamlining the workflow from lab prototype to mass-produced product.  

As of October 2021, the design of the Raspberry Beret is done (and, the layouts of the other five Beret variants, which are going to be very closely derived from the Raspberry Beret, are still under development).  We are currently about to fabricate and stress test our first set of boards. 

The design of our next-gen "myMiP", a 2-wheeled robot kit that is compatible with both the BeagleBone Blue as well as the entire Beret ecosystem, and which "makers" can design and 3D print their own shells for (as outlined at the 10 min mark in the above video), has been fully tuned for injection molding, and we are now negotiating with overseas fab facilities to get it produced at low cost.

BTW, "stress testing" of the Berets means that, once confirming their basic functionality, we will push these test units till they "break", both in terms of top comm speeds on certain critical SPI channels, and current-handling capabilities in various high-power sections of the boards.  That is, we will intentionally fry a few boards, and watch (with heat-sensitive IR cameras) where the weakest spots are (despite all of our best efforts thus far, we are certain some will be evident), then tweak the designs accordingly.  That should be exciting, hopefully we can get some of this process on video...