Since our last hardware design update in April, we have been hard at work refining the Cynthion design in preparation for production. Believe it or not, we’ve completed and tested six design revisions since r0.6 described in April!

In r0.7 we increased the maximum pass-through current by selecting FETs with lower resistance and by improving heat dissipation of the PCB layout. We added filters to the buttons, reducing the need for debouncing in firmware and gateware. We added a zero ohm series resistor to the oscillator so that it could be replaced easily with a higher resistance if indicated by electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) testing. We also updated several component selections and added or removed various pull-up and pull-down resistors, ensuring that we follow recommendations for the FPGA and microcontroller.

After testing these improvements, we decided that the design was ready for pre-production. We updated a few component selections, refined some nuances of the PCB layout, and bumped the hardware version number from r0.7 to r1.0.0.

Hardware Semantic Versioning

At this time we adopted an internal standard for hardware semantic versioning. It can be difficult to know how to version hardware designs, so we chose to make our decision process easier by establishing a set of rules adapted from the popular semantic versioning standard for software. While the software semantic versioning standard is focused on the software’s Application Programming Interface (API), our standard for hardware focuses on the hardware/software interface.

As an example, a change to the PCB layout that has no affect on software would warrant a bump from 1.0.0 to 1.0.1, but swapping pin assignments on a microcontroller (necessitating different firmware behavior) would require the version number to be bumped from 1.0.0 to 1.1.0. While software version numbers are often prefixed with “v”, we use “r” for hardware, making it easier to tell if we are referring to a software version or hardware version.

Although r1.0.0 differed very little from r0.7, we bumped the major version number to indicate that it was the first version handed off for volume production. It later turned out that further revisions were required, but r1.0.0 was the first version that conceivably could have ended up in your hands.

The Component Shortage Strikes Again

As mentioned in Cynthion Delivery Timeline Update, we soon learned that the power monitoring component used in r0.6 through r1.0.0 was no longer available. While many thousands were available just three weeks earlier, they all had vanished in the short time between prototyping r0.7 and purchasing components for production!

Fortunately, we were able to find just enough of an alternative component, so we snatched it up and designed and tested another revision, r1.1.0, using the new part. Because the new part is the same IC in a different package, nothing needed to change in r1.1.0 except for the PCB layout and some pin assignments.

Around this time, we received new enclosure samples, updated for the larger PCB size introduced in r0.6. The samples were great, but we noticed that they made the buttons feel inconsistent. It was very difficult to center the PCB in the enclosure such that the button plungers all extended the same distance. A certain amount of play in the placement of the PCB within the enclosure is unavoidable, but for some reason it seemed to be nearly impossible to center the PCB perfectly.

Upon further investigation, the problem turned out to be with the PCB design, not the enclosure. When I had added a new button in r0.6, I accidentally placed it 0.1 mm closer to the PCB edge than the other two buttons. It wasn’t noticeable at first, but, once the board was placed in an enclosure, it was possible to feel the difference! We corrected this tiny discrepancy in r1.1.1.

Electromagnetic Compatibility Challenges

After our first round of EMC pre-compliance testing we hoped that we would be able to pass a second round with some software modifications and minor hardware updates (such as increasing the value of the oscillator series resistor). While some of these measures were effective, they weren’t enough to pass the emissions test. After our second test we determined that another hardware design revision was required to reduce electromagnetic emissions.

In r1.2.0 we significantly improved power supply connectivity and decoupling for the FPGA which seemed to be the principal remaining source of emissions. Most of these changes were enabled by updating the PCB from four layers to six. Additionally we added series resistors to the ULPI bus that connects each USB PHY to the FPGA. We suspected that these resistors may be unnecessary (except perhaps the ones on the ULPI clock signals), but it is much easier to swap in different resistances than it was before we added those resistor array footprints.

Our next pre-compliance test clearly indicated that we had successfully quashed emissions from the FPGA, but the we still had a borderline result. One of our configurations passed the test but with very little margin. We felt that we needed to reduce emissions further to ensure success in the formal test.

With the FPGA noise out of the way, it had become possible to detect emissions from the USB PHYs. After some experimentation, we determined that these emissions could be reduced with further modifications to the PCB design and enclosure.

We addressed PHY noise in r1.3.0 by improving shielding and PHY power supply decoupling and by installing common-mode chokes on the USB data signals. Additionally we made a change to FPGA control that makes it easier to recover a Cynthion bricked by bad gateware, and we fixed a power supply start-up bug that was introduced in r1.2.0.

I’m pleased to report that r1.3.0 passed EMC pre-compliance testing! There are some small bugs that need to be corrected in one more hardware revision, but we are now confident that Cynthion will pass the formal EMC test.

Viewing the Design

Most of the changes since r0.6 are unlikely to ever be noticed by a Cynthion user, but they all enhance the quality of the product in some way. The most significant functional change is that pass-through power now supports up to 3 A of current.

Design documents and fabrication outputs for each of these hardware revisions have been released in the new cynthion-hardware repository. Previously the design was included in the LUNA repository which now contains only the LUNA gateware library.