More votes, more prototypes, more testing....

We hit 1000 votes today! This confirms that there is definitely enough interest in the module to keep on going full speed ahead :)

This week I have been busy building more prototypes. I had already built three with the old board and I have built another three this week. Prototyping goes a little faster now that I have the SMT rework station.

I have assembled two of the prototype II boards with a chip antenna (see the bottom two modules in the photo) and one of the old prototype I boards with a thinner patch antenna (see the right module in the middle row in the photo).

I have done some more field testing (that is inside, outside and in my car while on the road) and it does seem that the patch antennas work better than the chip antenna. The chip antennas also are very sensitive to board layout. I had to trim some of the copper on the board before I finally got these two chip antenna boards to work.

So I have decided that it is best to go with a patch antenna solution to guarantee performance. As such, there will be no room for a full dock connector but instead there will be a micro-USB connector which has a slimmer footprint than the mini-USB connectors and which is the new standard for mobile devices.

I also have an update regarding the LED indicator light. The prototype II boards have a bi-color blue/red LED. The blue LED is the power-on indicator and the red LED will flash until a GPS lock is found (combined with the blue it gives a pink/purple colored flash).

This week I will be working on the layout of the final board design for the patch antenna prototypes and I hope to have the board design frozen before the end of May.