I worked like crazy again the whole week before and on the weekend. There are hungry Pioupious all over my house.

So obviously, it started with the law of maximum hassle. By dint of being 200% on the keyboard, paragliding, climbing and windsurfing, I caught a mild tendonitis in my wrist. It's practical just before attacking the assembly of 30 prototypes...

It was therefore necessary to arrange the job to solicit as little as possible the painful hand. This is where the electric screwdriver saved my life.

As these machines never have a battery, I solved the problem in my own way...

Well now at least I'm trained to work on the assembly line.

After the mechanical details, I finished the cards. The few missing components had to be soldered by hand. Lead-free, solder, RoHS directive requires.

All that over, I mounted a few to test one last time. I wanted to be sure before drowning the cards in the tropicalization varnish (to protect the circuits from humidity).

Everything was working perfectly. These two beacons even faced their first storm.

I installed a third Pioupiou this morning on the roof of Xavier's, at the St-Hilaire-Du-Touvet landing.

He was even able to face the 17 p.m. storm that had been forecast meteo-paragliding.com

He recorded us a few gusts: (the times are in UTC, you have to add 2)

So everything was fine so far... 

On this good momentum, I was quietly assembling the last beacons to put them at the Post Office tomorrow.

And there, the drama: I feel a card heating up in my hand.

There is a fairly general rule in electronics, which says that when it smokes it's not a good sign.

There is another rather general rule in electronics, which says that smoking is fun. But for once I laughed less than during elective labs in high school.

After a big panic, I identified the problem:

In the drawing of the boards, I forgot to remove the ground plane around the battery clips. It's a stupid mistake. So in some special cases it can short-circuit. That's the joy of prototypes.

Saved, it's not irreversible. But you will still have to attack the cards one by one with the dremel to correct the defect.

I think we're off again for a week of brain-busting!

To make you wait, I promise I will make you a beautiful page to contemplate the measurements of Pioupiou de Lumbin.

And to console myself, I'm going to attack another local Pioupiou. Looks more edible this one 🙂

WEDNESDAY EVENING UPDATE:

Finally not even badly, the drémel does the job perfectly.

More than thirty cards to butcher and re-varnish and all that will be just an old story.

In the meantime, I tested a functional Pioupiou this afternoon at Lake Laffrey. He did pretty well.

This article tells you about the birth of Piou Piou, the first 100% autonomous and affordable sensor to measure the wind live, even where there is no electricity or internet.

Discover Pioupiou on his website: http://pioupiou.fr