This piece showcases 200 retired testbeds that were designed and used in SparkFun production during the ten year span from 2007 to 2017. Every new product at SparkFun gets a custom testbed, so each circuit board mounted here carries a long story about the product’s development.
The most common testbed design contains an Arduino microcontroller and pogo-pins to make a temporary connection to the product. The product is placed on top of the test fixture and then it will be programmed and tested before sent to packaging. Down in production, there are 400+ more active testbeds, and these are maintained and used by production daily. With 50 to 75 new products being released each year, this inventory of active testbeds grows quickly!
The testbeds are mounted to ¼” clear acrylic, and are edge-lite with a long strip of 498 LEDs (apa102s). It is powered by 5V and roughly pulls about 3 amps. The design that has been etched into the acrylic is from a universal testbed “brain” that is called the Flying Jalapeno. The etching includes the top copper, bottom copper and the schematic. This design is now used frequently on new testbeds.
This piece was a collaboration between many SparkFun employees, and we’d like to send a big thanks to all who helped make this come alive!
Pete Lewis (lead designer)
Nick Beni (fabricator)
Andrew England (firmware)
Test Developers
Joel Bartlett
Kade Drobeck
Theo Simpson
Eric Orosel
Elias Santistevan
Joshua Smith
Seth Ragland
Read the entire project blog post here:
https://www.sparkfun.com/news/3101
SparkFun products used in this project:
LED RGB Strip - Addressable, 5m (APA102) https://www.sparkfun.com/products/14016
SparkFun RedBoard Turbo - SAMD21 Development Board https://www.sparkfun.com/products/14812
Mean Well LED Switching Power Supply - 5VDC, 5A https://www.sparkfun.com/products/14601