Our first prototype boards have arrived

Early on we created a goal that Barnluren should be accessible to any family. To achieve this, we knew that we had to keep the cost as low as possible. This led to one of the key decisions for the product - not connecting to the public phone network.

Using real public phone numbers adds a lot of complexity. You also have buy the numbers and then pay a monthly fee. Happily this forced us to think creatively and build what we think is a better solution, a fully private phone network where children use landline phones and we build a free app for adults that seamlessly bridges our network to their smartphone. This cuts out a major cost and we can pass the savings on to our users, keeping the subscription lower than the cost of a cup of coffee per month. The other big cost is the initial purchase of the device that connects an analog phone to your home WiFi.

We need a device that is simple, easy to configure, can be plugged into a wall power outlet anywhere in the home and connect to WiFi. Unfortunately as we discovered such a device does not exist off the shelf, the closest we have found is the Flying Voice FTA1101 which is what we are using during the Pioneer Beta program. This device has many more features than we need though and we feel we can bring the price down and improve the user experience by building our own device.

Building a new piece of hardware from scratch is a massive undertaking but our background in building AI agents gave us the confidence to attempt it. So we built an AI agent to automate and manage much of the design and manufacturing process.

Our agent uses Claude Code combined with excellent open source software such as SKiDL and KiCad to handle circuit design, component sourcing and programmatic validation. Once we have the fundamentals in place, I work through the last mile of routing all the tracks on the board and the final component layout.

With this approach we have gone from idea to having the first prototype boards manufactured and delivered in weeks. I have to say a big thank you to ICAPE and Mitac for their support and patience with us newbies in manufacturing our boards which have been produced locally in Sweden. We hope to keep the manufacturing in Sweden for the long term.

After compulsively checking the tracking in the Postnord app for two days, the boards finally got delivered yesterday evening and I could not wait to power them up! Unfortunately after connecting the power and my debug cables to my laptop nothing happened. The boards were dead on arrival which is a likely outcome for the first prototypes, so I was quite disappointed. That is until I realised I had simply connected the debug wires the wrong way round! I was elated when I switched them and got a familiar Linux login prompt! They are alive!

Booting the boards and seeing them come to life is a big step, but it's only the first part of the journey - next is to validate the WiFi circuitry and the chip that connects to the analog phone. This will take a few days of software work to build our custom firmware specifically for the new boards. I will post how that process goes.

As with everything in startup life, it's hard to juggle priorities. We have our devices for the Barnluren Pioneer beta program from Flying Voice on the way. So I will be focussing most of my attention on getting them to our pioneers and the beta fully up and running. So the custom firmware will be on the backburner, but it's nice to have such a fun project on the back burner!