da Bomb Badge: Unboxing and Assembly

You get home, there's a package there from USPS and you suddenly wonder – OMG, is this da bomb? It is! What's that grease and pizza stain? That latent stink of whiskey? and the blood? The trials of #badgelife, all in your hands.

A year of work got us to the device in your hands, today.

We left you a little bit of work.   I know we said "fully assembled" when you bought our badge, but had we left it fully assembled, your badge would have fallen apart at the brutal, crushing hands of the USPS. (We expected the screens to break in shipping and wanted to provide some extra screen protection!)

So let's get that bomb armed, okay?

Step 1: Attach the battery.

We glued a LiPo battery to your badge. In some cases, we put two-sided tape on the battery and put the battery back in the box. (After building hundreds of these, we had to save a little time on kitting to make it to DC27!)

If you're attaching the battery, peel the backing off of the two-sided tape, put one side on the battery, and firmly press the battery up against the back of the PCB. Try very hard not to cover the screw holes. This image shows the right way to place the battery and screws:

We've tried to place batteries in the right place, but there's a chance that we covered the screen mounting holes. We corrected quite a few of these in our final QA! Hopefully yours is fine. If not, be very, very gentle in removing the battery. If you puncture the LiPo, it will leak and possibly explode, and you're gonna have a bad day. Pushing a plastic knife or spudger gently into the adhesive and turning slowly seems to be the easiest/safest way to remove the battery that we've found out.

Once you've got that sorted, turn the badge over and find the white battery connector. Plug it neatly into off-white JST connector.

Step 2: Screen Find the screen in the mass of plastic and shipping junk we had to put in there to defend you from the postperson's evils. Flip it over. The SD Card should be inserted, face up into the SD card holder (the large silver object to the lower left) Make sure it's seated. If you want to remove it, push it in once.

The SD card is required for the system to boot up.

Failure to have an SD card inserted results in a CHECK SD CARD error.

Step 3: Remove the two screws, and put those little things somewhere safe. There should be four screws. Leave the standoffs attached to the screen.

Step 4: Line up the screws with the holes and install the screen.

Step 5: Install screws from the bottom of the board, through the M2.5 holes, into the standoffs. If the standoffs do not line up, loosen the top standoffs, get the screws started in the bottom, and then tighten both sides. The PCB holes are aligned but the surface mount 40-pin connector can drift during oven reflow, disrupting the alignment. We have tried to account for this with  small screws and large hole sizes.

By the way, the small amounts of flux that remain on the SAO connectors and speakers are nothing to worry about. If you want to remove it, use a foam swab and some 91% or 99% alcohol. Disconnect battery first before cleaning.

Step 5: Power on!
Move the Power switch to the rear of the badge, towards the tail.

Step 7: Attach the lanyard.

It's got two clips. Do something fashionable with it, okay? They go into the top two holes of the PCB.

Step 8: Charge it! The batteries are typically shipped at about 60%. Get a 2.1A USB charger and a micro USB cable. Charge the device as soon as you can.

If one RED and one GREEN LED below the JTAG connector light up strongly,  daBomb is charging! A pulsating or flickering LED indicates there is insufficient power coming from your power supply. Get another if this the case.

When charging, the RED CHARGING LED will light until completed, at which point the green 'charged' light' will light when done. If both green LEDs are on (2-4 hours depending on your charger), you're at 100%. Time to battle!