While waiting for the Rascal to be assembled by robots in Colorado, I designed a small circuit board that plugs into the top of the Rascal for driving high-power LEDs. In the last decade, clever engineers have figured out how to make LEDs that can handle around 100 times the…

The circuit boards for the second version of the Rascal, which fixes a couple of hardware errors in the first version, arrived last week. I checked that a few new component footprints are correct and then sent them off for assembly. They should be ready for testing on Monday, August…

The first batch of Rascals arrived fresh from the assembler a few days ago (July 14, 2010, for the historical record). I had an assembly house in Colorado solder all of the large chips, including the slightly scary BGA package. Thanks to a microscope from GreenMountain, I was able to…