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How are you going about Production Programming for nRF51 parts?

Marc Nicholas

Howdy,

We're gearing up to program about 4,000 nRF51822s. They'll get the BLE version of DFU plus a stable version of our own code. For future production runs, we'll likely have our partner in Japan program the devices on the assembly line.

So, my question is: how are you handling your programming? Are you literally doing boards one-at-a-time with a SEGGER and a pogo-pins or similar?

Our PCBs are panelized as 5*5, so I've toyed with the idea of building an X-Y slide with stepper motors to fly a programming head across the boards. Buying 25 SEGGERs so that we can push 25 sets of pogo-pins down on to an entire panel is cost prohibitive.

Our world is also slightly more complex in that we create custom stickers that are unique to each programmed device, too :)

Thoughts? Current strategies? Horror stories? Please share! :)

-m

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  • 0

    a cute approach would be the thought of using a Techno-Isel (or like) CNC router frame with a nest fo the pvb's and "toolhead" thats composed of a Bed of Nails fixture. One could easily use the "spindle"/"toolchanger" controls to trigger a flash go..(click of the mouse button.). If your product has an LED, a light sequence on program,reset could give you a go/no signal.

    We have one that's used for light stuff and prototyping and certainy has the speed and accuracy of about.0004" repeatability, to hold a BoN. Our 10-year old machine has travel movement of 1200ips. Newer ones are probable faster. The movement is very reliable.

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  • 0

    a cute approach would be the thought of using a Techno-Isel (or like) CNC router frame with a nest fo the pvb's and "toolhead" thats composed of a Bed of Nails fixture. One could easily use the "spindle"/"toolchanger" controls to trigger a flash go..(click of the mouse button.). If your product has an LED, a light sequence on program,reset could give you a go/no signal.

    We have one that's used for light stuff and prototyping and certainy has the speed and accuracy of about.0004" repeatability, to hold a BoN. Our 10-year old machine has travel movement of 1200ips. Newer ones are probable faster. The movement is very reliable.

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  • 0 in reply to roger hayes

    We actually considered exactly that as we have a ShapeOko not doing much right now.

    Accuracy/repeatability were a concern.

    It was at that point that we considered that pogo pins and PCBs are relatively cheap and we could use a mux/demux chip to switch between a single SEGGER.

    The $0.95 chips we bought multiplex 16 channels in both directions. So, for our panels, we'd still need two SEGGERs (which luckily we have) but that's a whole bunch better than 25 :D

    -m

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