On Tue, May 09, 2006 at 10:14:46AM -0400, Carey Fisher wrote:
> Our Boards have the Assembly # and bare board # combined as in : 
> "AS/PCB100123 Rev C" printed in silkscreen along with our name and 
> copyright date(s).
>  This business would be a mess without Configuration Control!!!!!!
> 
> The only issue I am struggling with is how to ID and track firmware 
> revisions???  Especially since I occasionally ICSP an updated or bespoke 
> firmware version on one or more specific units.  We don't track specific 
> PCBs by S/N - maybe we should?  How do others do this?

My practices probably aren't really applicable but... I simply assign a
64-bit random number to every single bit of art I make. This all goes in
a large database and I maintain history logs for everything related to
the devices. The system isn't completely developed, but since I also
store all of the information related to the design of my art in cvs it's
fairly simple to tag specific revisions.

For instance I can say that 8bea5b38cb0594d3 refers to one of my 16^2
Intersector's. The actual pcb is tagged with 4ae5497faeface23 on the
front solder layer which corresponds to a tag in CVS for that particular
revision (1.0) of the board. I also have it noted what the firmware
loaded into the PIC chip is. Finally I have scans and photos of the
final product, very usefull if I need to make another.

Most of that info is on my website too, at http://petertodd.ca/uuid
Still gotta reorganize some stuff though, for instance the above CVS tag
stuff isn't actually in the database, but rather in another directory...
I think with all this stuff you really gotta be diligent in your record
keeping, no doubt about it. It's far too easy to get lax.

-- 
pete@petertodd.ca http://www.petertodd.ca
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