Overview

Week 6 focused heavily on supply chain consolidation and custom hardware library creation. While the core software codebase continued its steady development, the hardware team dedicated significant effort to generating custom schematic symbols and PCB footprints in Altium to accommodate components lacking manufacturer-provided models.

What We Did

• Bill of Materials (BOM) Finalization: Completed and locked the first official draft of the BOM. All critical components, including the CO sensor, IMU, and LoRa module, have been paired with verified manufacturer part numbers and vetted for vendor availability.
• Custom Component Library Creation: Generated custom schematic symbols and precise PCB footprints from scratch for the majority of our components, as verified manufacturing models were unavailable.
• Ongoing Codebase Development: Continued iterative logic updates within the repository, focusing on optimizing data packets for the upcoming sensor integration testing.

Key Decisions

• Component Model Standard: Decided to manually build and double-verify all missing component footprints against IPC standards rather than using unverified third-party community models, ensuring manufacturing reliability.

Challenges

• Lack of Pre-made Component Assets: The absence of ready-made Altium symbols and footprints for our specific sensor suite slowed down schematic progress, requiring intensive datasheet cross-referencing to map physical dimensions and pinouts accurately.

Next Steps

• Begin linking the newly created custom component footprints to the schematic and officially kick off the Altium board layout.
• Deploy the finalized BOM for initial component purchasing.
• Run communication loop tests using the I2C bus on the development hardware.