Blog

Most of these blog entries essentially mirror emails we send out to our subscribers on a regular basis.  If you are interested in becoming a subscriber to our email list, sign-up using the form on the right.

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Alorium + Digi-Key

Alorium Technology Products are Now Available Through Digi-Key! 

We are very excited to share that all of our products are now available through our newest distribution partner, Digi-Key!

XLR8, Snō, and SnōMākr boards are all ready for immediate purchase.  Click on the links below to be taken to the Digi-Key product highlight pages for each board:
Hinj will be available for purchase, as well, as soon as we start shipping the production version.
We are thrilled to be partnered with Digi-Key!
And speaking of Hinj…
Hinj boards have taken longer than expected to get into full production, and we apologize for the delay and relative silence on the topic the last couple of months.
We bumped into a PCB issue on what was to be our production boards back in September, and we needed to address that before pulling the trigger on the volume orders.
Our new board order has been placed, and we are expecting the first units to roll off the manufacturing line later this month.  If all goes well, we anticipate shipping to our distributors in early December.

Improve Your Project!

XLR8 and Snō Integration with Ubidots

XLR8 and Snō Integration with Ubidots

Earlier this year Alorium Technology partnered with Ubidots to integrate XLR8 and Snō with Ubidots’ IoT dashboard. We are very excited about the opportunity for IoT development that this provides for our users. If you are interested in connecting your XLR8 or Snō board to Ubidots you can go through their quick XLR8 or Snō guide below.

How to Connect XLR8 to Ubidots

How to Connect Snō to Ubidots

 

Improve Your Project!

OpenXLR8 Beta is now ready!

A couple of quick items before heading out on a beautiful Friday afternoon in July:

I am excited to share that the Beta version of OpenXLR8 is now ready for use!

OpenXLR8 is the methodology we are actively developing that allows users to develop their own custom Xcelerator Blocks and integrate them them into the XLR8 FPGA.

Click here to learn more and take a first look at the instructions and steps to create a custom Xcelerator Block.

XLR8 Production Update

Of course, to fully realize the value of being able to create your own XB for XLR8, you probably need to have an actual XLR8, right? Well, we are pressing hard toward getting one in your hands soon!

The first major lot of our volume production is running next week. I’ll send out another email as soon as we have a good feeling for when boards will be ready to ship.

Thanks for sticking with us. I know we are behind in our original manufacturing timeline estimates, but we are getting…so…close.

Have a great weekend!
Jason

XLR8 and the Wisconsin Innovation Awards

Earlier this summer, Alorium Technology was nominated for the 2016 Wisconsin Innovation Awards (WIA) based the work that we have done with XLR8. After two rounds of application submissions and review cycles, we are honored to be one of the finalists for this year’s awards.

The final results will be announced at an event on Tuesday, August 16th in Madison, Wisconsin.

 

People’s Choice Award – would you help us?

Each company also has a chance to win the People’s Choice Award. This is awarded based on votes received through a special Facebook page set up specifically for the WIA.  If you would like to help our chances at receiving the People’s Choice Award, you can follow the link below and vote for Alorium Technology.

Click here to learn more about the Wisconsin Innovation Awards.  You will be able to see the entire list of finalists at the voting page, or you can check out the press release here.

Thank you for your help!

Sincerely,
Jason

Production Update and OpenXLR8

XLR8 Production is a GO!

I am very excited to share that we have given the green light to our manufacturer, and volume production of our XLR8 board is underway!
We expect to have boards available for purchase at Mouser.com in the first half of July.  I’ll keep you posted with more detailed dates as we get closer to the first shipments.
For now, here’s a quick peek at the final version the board with our nifty new silk screens:

 

OpenXLR8

OpenXLR8 is our methodology for allowing you to design and implement your own custom FPGA Xcelerator Blocks. We are getting very close to our Beta release for early customer testing and are planning for early access when the production boards start shipping.

I’ll be sending out another email regarding OpenXLR8 sometime next week with additional details and a request for feedback from those who are interested.

If you have any questions or comments, let me know. It’s great hearing from you!

Jason

XLR8 Production Boards and Maker Faire 2016

Happy Friday!  It’s a glorious spring day here in Eau Claire.  It’s been some time since we have sent out an email, so I wanted to share a couple of updates with you today.

The XLR8 Rev 3 production board is ready!

We just received four engineering samples for the final production version of the XLR8 board. Everything is looking good, and we are about to throw the switch on full volume production.

Very little has changed with the Rev 2 design, actually. Most of the modifications are cosmetic, and there are a few manufacturing/testability tweaks to ease volume production.

The new boards should be available for purchase in early June!

Maker Faire Logo

Maker Faire Bay Area 2016

We have been invited to join one of our partners at Maker Faire 2016 in San Mateo, CA on May 21st and 22nd.

As the details get finalized in the coming days, I’ll send out another update so you can find us if you happen to be out there in person. It would be great to meet you face-to-face!

<– Click on the nifty Maker Faire logo for more information about Maker Faire.

 

A hearty THANKS to those of you who bought one (or more) of the early XLR8 boards from Mouser.  It has been fun interacting with a few of you via emails and calls.  Your input and early feedback has been very valuable.

We are excited for what this summer has in store for XLR8.

XLR8 now available on Mouser.com!

I am very excited to share that XLR8 is now available though Mouser, and you can check it out here:

Click here to see XLR8 at Mouser.com

There are only a small number of boards available right now – 29 in total, as I am typing this email. But as I mentioned in my last update, our production order is underway, and we will be sending a bunch more of them to Mouser sometime in May.

So, if you have been waiting to get your hands on an XLR8, now is a great time to grab one of the available boards.

We have more to share in the near future as we add XBs, additional features and some ideas for companion technology.

I will continue to keep you all in the loop. Thanks for your continued support!

The XLR8 ADC: Turn it up to 12!

Happy February!

I know we were pretty quiet on email and with our social media chatter this last month, but don’t let that make you think we have not been quite active!

The team has been busy putting final touches on the XLR8 design, and we are excited for what the month of February has in store for XLR8.  You can expect to see an uptick in communications from us over the coming couple of weeks.

For today, however, I wanted to share a quick update on the enhanced Analog-to-Digital Converter (ADC) Xcelerator Block.

The XLR8 ADC: Turn it up to 12!

Our ADC XB leverages the native 12-bit ADC on the MAX10 FPGA and allows us to provide a solution that improves sampling performance and overall results.​

Key features include:

  • 12-bit output resolution
  • Higher sample rate of 154k samples/second

 

Check out this table for an ADC comparison between XLR8 and a standard Uno.

ADC_Table

 

The Uno provides a 10-bit ADC and runs at a default sample rate of 9.6k samples/second. It can be over-clocked to 77k, but this can result in errors that limit results to a 9-bit effective resolution.

XLR8 can achieve a sample rate of 154k samples/second and maintain a sustained resolution of 12-bits at that rate. This means XLR8 could be a great solution for interesting audio applications or other projects where finer ADC resolution is required.​

That’s it for today. Keep your eyes open for another email or two coming your way shortly. We have more to share in the near future!

As always, thank you for your continued interest!

Jason

XLR8 Rev 2.0 and User-Defined XBs

It’s been a couple of weeks since our last email. We have continued to stay active with our development on XLR8 and planning our next steps for production.

I wanted to share a quick update on the recent happenings at Alorium Technology.

The Rev 2.0 XLR8 Board is Here!

We received our first prototypes of the Rev 2.0 XLR8 board, and everything is working great!

Some of the key changes on this board include:

  • Mechanical changes to better match standard Arduino Uno, Sparkfun RedBoard, etc…
  • Full 5V support for Digital I/O
  • Access to JTAG pins for use as extra I/O pins
  • SOIC-8 pads for optional EEPROM or SRAM

And of course there are a handful of fixes to some nits and nuisance behaviors we found with Rev 1.

We are very excited to have the protos in-house!  You will see more of the new board as pictures propagate across our website and it shows up in video demos of new XBs and other features we are developing.

 User-Defined XBs

One consistent piece of feedback we received during our Kickstarter campaign was that the ability for users to design and load their own custom Xcelerator Blocks on to the FPGA is a key feature.

So, we have listened and are taking action!

We are close to finishing development on the design flow that will allow for the creation of user-defined XBs. And while you will need the free web version of Altera’s Quartus II to compile your source code, no JTAG programming is required! You will be able to update XLR8 with your custom blocks across the USB connection.

As soon as it is ready, we will be sure to create a video showing how this process will work. Stay tuned!

Production Update

We are very close to selecting our production partner for the first volume run of boards. The target date to kick-off production on the new design is January 2016. We will be sure to keep you posted regarding the production timeline and when/how you can place your orders.

As always, please contact us with any questions or other feedback. We love to hear from you!

XLR8 Kickstarter Update

Our XLR8 Kickstarter campaign officially closed last night. If you are one of the 145 backers that pledged support to our project, thank you very much for your willingness to help!

Unfortunately, we did not hit our funding goal. And while that is a disappointment for us, it is our current intention to continue moving forward with XLR8. Not succeeding with the Kickstarter campaign just means that our specific plans for how we step forward are being reevaluated and adjusted.

We are looking at alternative ways to fund an initial quantity build, and we are hopeful that we’ll still be able to do a production run of the XLR8 boards. We will keep you all informed as we gain clarity about our next steps.

We still have a lot of interest from individual makers, universities, and larger partnering organizations. We remain very excited about the opportunities that are ahead of us!

Thank you again for your continued support.

There’s a lot going on, and we are thrilled that you are joining us on the journey!  Please don’t hesitate to reach out to us at any time if you have questions.   We love hearing from you.

Thanks again!
Jason