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Last active August 29, 2015 13:56
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I want to make better tools for electronics makers and hobbyists, and I want you
to help me do it.
About a year ago, I was working on a project with a power supply I needed to
test, and I designed the original Re:load. As it happens, I'm not the only one
that needed one, and the Re:load became my first commercial product, and led to
the formation of Arachnid Labs. The Re:load's hugely popular with anyone who
needs to test a power supply, check battery life or discharge rates, or anything
else that requires a steady current source - especially if they don't have
thousands of dollars to throw at expensive lab equipment.
So I'm really happy to be able to show off my newest project, the Re:load Pro.
The Re:load pro has all the advantages of the original Re:load - it's robust,
versatile and affordable - and turns it into a piece of professional quality
benchtop equipment. At the same time, it adds a whole set of new features that
people have been asking for ever since the original Re:load came out.
The Re:load pro is USB powered. It's fully isolated, so you're not going to blow
up your shiny new macbook pro if you accidentally plug it into the wrong thing.
I think a great user interface is vital to making this a piece of kit that's
easy to use, so it's got a good quality display, and you can do everything you
need right on the device. You can also control and monitor it over USB if
automation is your thing.
Just like the original Re:load, the Pro is designed to be as electrically robust
as I can make it. It handles overcurrent, overvoltage, and reverse polarity just
fine. I have yet to have anyone return a Re:load to me because it failed in
normal operation - and I want to keep that reliability record intact for the
Re:load Pro.
Open Source is important to me, and so like all Arachnid Labs' creations, the
full schematics and source code are available online, under an open source
license, right now. See the project details for a link. And because a USB
bootloader is built in, you won't need special equipment to try out improvements
on your own Re:load.
The Re:load Pro is the most ambitious project I've tackled yet, and the startup
costs for even a small run are quite substantial for a small company like
Arachnid Labs. The custom enclosure and heatsink which make the Re:load such a
nice device all come with tooling and manufacturing costs. With your help and
support, we can make the Re:load pro a reality, and give you the tools you need
to develop your own remarkable creations.
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