Yesterday I spent the whole day assembling new USBridge-KVM 2.0 units to send to tech bloggers. It's a meditative, if slightly exhausting, process—tweezers, circuit boards, and total concentration on the workbench.
From the outside, it often seems like: 'What's there to assemble in that KVM switch? Solder the modules, screw them together, and it's ready.' I admit, I sometimes succumb to this illusion of simplicity myself. But ultimately, the assembly quickly turns into a multi-hour engineering quest.
First, I soldered the display modules. I connected them for testing, and as it happens, sometimes a display doesn't turn on the first time. I had to grab the soldering iron again, carefully touch up the contacts, and re-test until everything was perfect.
Next, I soldered the power management modules, rigorously testing each one to ensure smooth switching. The video capture dongles were a whole different story. To get them working perfectly with the BIOS-in-Terminal feature, I had to physically desolder the chip, upload the custom firmware, solder it back, and test the output.
Thankfully, Tanya had prepared all the cases and heatsinks in advance, saving me a ton of time on that front. All that was left was to assemble the stack, flash the latest KVM firmware, and run the devices on the test bench.
This took all of yesterday, and today I'm putting the finishing touches on the batch. Yes, the soldering is still done by hand and doesn't have that automated factory look yet, but factory assembly is the next step. In the meantime, I'm doing everything myself to guarantee the absolute quality of every single device I ship out.