I started full time at goTenna in 2013, right at the beginning. Since then I designed the proof of concept device that got us our first funding, and all of the five hardware products we shipped since then: Pro, Mesh, V1, Embedded, and goKit. I also made a lot of custom devices for internal use, like test fixtures and specialized lab equipment. It was an amazing learning experience in so many ways. Much of my most wizardy wizarding I did here.
Here’s a few pictures from the inside:
The trail of deceased prototypes and beta units on the road to perfectionFirst Pro units from the factory in Mexico!SMTC Chihuahua facilityAntenna matching on a VNA: comparing before and after tweakscolor options!FCC and other certs! We passed so many; it was constant frustration for the graphic designer to have to squeeze more text in there.IP67 testing…IP68 testing rig I built for pre-compliance testing. There’s a pool of water in there, just deep enough to submerge the device under test. It gets sealed up and pressurized to simulate a depth of 10 meters. Leave it in there like that for an hour and see what happens. (In case you’re worried, that’s 1″ polycarbonate, which must be like 10x stronger than it needs to be, but I wasn’t going to find out the hard way.) Easter Egg on one of the PCBsA 30 port USB hub, because that’s a thing we made. Not shown is the injection molded cradle that fits on top.Control and measurement unit for a factory test fixture. There’s RF, analog, power, serial debug and programming ports.Field Test! I like the biking part, so I would usually volunteer to bike the remote unit (on my shoulder) into the testing range. This is at Jones Beach, which has a nice straight and level bike path that goes for about 10 miles.Another unit under test at the beach100W DCDC board with steerable input power, near zero crossover glitch (the brick is on the other side, those mosfets are just configured as ideal-diodes)sealing my beautiful PCBs into enclosures with the dreaded ultrasonic welder!Factory success!
testing for ESDFactory test fixturesClear housings to verify our assembly procedureThe un-miniaturized prototype of the goTenna pro. Because radios are SO FUSSY, we made sure everything was working as expected before sinking a lot of time into miniaturization and cost optimization. Also it’s really fun to have a suitcase that looks like a Time Machine inside. Finished product, ready to ship!
