Hello, my name is Jason Milldrum and I'm the founder and owner of Etherkit. I've been involved with the hobby electronics and ham radio community (especially the QRP and homebuilding side of it) for more than two decades. Etherkit has been providing open source hardware since 2011.
I'm now ready to launch some interesting new products that I've had in development for the last couple of years. The first of these is the Empyrean microcontroller, which I will tell you more about below. Empyrean is important to Etherkit because it is the basis of other products in the production pipeline. I also believe that it is great microcontroller board in its own right, and will be a fantastic choice for many electronics hobbyists.
This new product launch is vital to help expand Etherkit into the manufacturing of a new line of hobby electronics projects. By funding Empyrean, not only will you get a powerful and compact Arduino-compatible microcontroller, you'll help Etherkit to ramp up production on a variety of future open source hardware products.
Tell Me More about Empyrean
A powerful yet affordable breadboard-friendly Arduino IDE compatible 32-bit microcontroller with ample code space and RAM. Empyrean is derived from the Arduino Zero to be a much more builder-friendly microcontroller which excludes the expensive and rarely-used debug hardware. The PCB has castellated edge pins and a freely-available KiCad footprint for easy integration into larger projects. Empyrean is self-contained when used with a USB connection, as all programming, communication with a host PC (via a virtual UART), and power is provided. Three user-addressable status LEDs are provided on-board, as well as one power LED indicator (which can be disabled with a jumper to save current if desired). Devoted I2C and SPI serial communcation pins are available, as well as a shared hardware UART on digital pins 0 and 1. Six high-resolution (12-bit) ADC pins are included for analog sensing, as well as one 10-bit DAC pin for accurate waveform generation. Nearly every IO pin can be used for GPIO communications in addition to specialty functions that Empyrean provides.
Coding for Empyrean is done with the Arduino IDE (we hope to provide other platforms soon). Installing the board support package for Empyrean is quick and simple to do, just see the documentation section below for details. Arduino sketches can be uploaded via the Arduino IDE, as you would typically do with other Arduino-compatible boards. Empyrean also mounts to the PC filesystem as a storage device so that you may load a sketch onto it via a simple drag-and-drop of a specially compiled UF2 file. The Empyrean bootloader itself can also be updated in this way so that you don't have to have a ATMEL-ICE or similar programmer to do this job.
Empyrean Alpha Specifications
All SMT components assembled, 0.1" headers included unsoldered
Fully tested
Four built-in status LEDs: 3 user-addressable and 1 power
IC: Microchip Technologies ATSAMD21G18A
Clock Speed: 48 MHz
Flash Program Storage: 256 kB
RAM: 32 kB
ADC: 12-bit, 6 available input pins
DAC: 10-bit, 1 available output pin
Input Voltage: 5 VDC regulated (from USB or on VUSB pin), 3.3 VDC regulated (on 3.3V pin), 5-16 VDC (on VIN pin)
Pin Voltage: 3.3 VDC maximum
Pin Current: 7 mA sink/source maximum
Board Current: 150 mA total board current
PCB material: high quality 1.2 mm double-sided FR4 with soldermask and ENIG coating
PCB dimensions: 18 mm x 45 mm
- RoHS Compliant
Documentation
Quick Reference Guide
Schematics
Instructions for installing Empyrean board support on the Arduino IDE are currently available on the Empyrean GitHub repository. Full-fledged documentation will be available upon product release.
Our Goals and Vision
The objective for this campaign is to raise funds to have a large batch of Empyrean boards manufactured; enough to both fulfill campaign orders and to have a stock for ongoing sales at etherkit.com. Any profits will go back into Etherkit; specifically into finishing the last bit of development to bring the OpenBeacon 2 MEPT to market. Ultimately, the overarching goal is to move Etherkit into being able to offer a wide variety of new open source hardware products which are partial kits; meaning that all SMT components are professionally installed and that a small amount of through-hole components may need to be installed by the hobbyist customer.
Our goal for you is that you receive a powerful and quality microcontroller board that you find useful for many of your electronics project needs. Even if the campaign doesn't reach the funding goal listed at the top, if you financially back a perk, you'll receive it.
The Impact of Your Support
Helping me to fund this campaign will get Etherkit back on the track of producing high-quality open source hardware for the electronics hobbyist and amateur radio market. A few years ago, I was able to deliver a successful Indiegogo campaign. The previous campaign shows that Etherkit has the ability and track record to fulfill a campaign as promised. We also kept refining the design of that product in response to customer feedback after the campaign ended. We do intend to provide similar support to the Empyrean product line, as it is intended to be the backbone of many future Etherkit products.
If you are unable to fund this campaign financially but you still like what we are doing and want to support us, then please spread the word about this campaign and Etherkit in general. Social media exposure is greatly appreciated!
Risks & Challenges
Any new venture has risks. Empyrean development is already mostly finished and it has been used by multiple beta testers in different projects, and has even been deployed in an industrial lab setting already.
Almost all of the current risk stems from the impacts of COVID-19. There are no exotic parts used in Empyrean and most every component has multiple substitutes. The only one that does not fit this category is the ATSAMD21 microcontroller IC used, although lately it has been in ample supply at multiple distributors. Therefore, supply chain issues are possible, but are a low risk by our estimation.
The largest risk identified for this campaign is schedule slippage due to COVID-19 delays from contract manufacturing and international shipping (both inbound to us from the board manufacturer and outbound to campaign backers). We plan to build enough margin into the delivery date to avoid this as much as possible, but some scheduling delays are still possible.
Thank You!
You made it all the way to the end! The Etherkit cats thank you for helping to keep them comfortable in their supply of Greenies!