LambdaChip Alonzo “Unboxing” (at WoodHouse BBQ)

2021-03-29 by terryoy, in misc

Since many people have to wait for their LamdbaChip Alonzo board to arrive, I'm going to write an “unboxing” article about the dev board here and share an interesting story about it.

This is not the official article to LambdaChip and the Alonzo board. It's just that I'm lucky enough to know for years the guys behind all these, who pay endless effort to make this product come true and keep improving. It's a great honor to be in the SZDIY community and share the highlight moments of this project.

The Release Announcement (at WoodHouse BBQ)

Just a few days before the Chinese New Year of 2021, the LamdbaChip team decided to announce the Alonzo board after a long prepration for manufacturing. A group of friends in SZDIY gathered at WoodHouse BBQ(a famous Shenzhen BBQ restaurant) for the dinner, and in the atmosphere of beer and joy, co-founder Rafael Lee bring out several suites of the LamdbaChip Alonzo bundle version and give them out to everyone, and ask for everyone's opinion.

And this was what I've got:

The “Un-unboxing” experience

Instead of getting a fine assembled box of the product(like you always do when you buy something), we got pieces of the every bits we need to assembled a final box of the bundle. So this unboxing is kind of like a “time-reversed” experience, (or “inverting entropy” as in the film Tenet), which you start with the pieces and end with a box.

First, the paper case as the last image. Then came the manual and the wires:

As you can see, there is the USB dongle for Type C, and the white wire with both USB Type C at each end. So it gives you the flexibility to connect to a Type A or Type C receptable, on PC or or Mobile or any other USB charger. There is another grey wire which is a JTAG connector for the Saruman Debugger. Also, there are some pieces of aclyric board in the plastic bag, which will make a protection case for the Alonzo board.

Then we got a few more to assemble, the foam holder and the boards: the Alonzo and the Saruman Debugger.

For saving the cost, we didn't get the TF card that comes with the bundle(also because we are so easy to get one in HuaQiangBei market), but we got a bag for carrying all the things you need to play with the Alonzo board(I believe it is also included in the bundle package).

Finally, we arrived at the very beginning of “the unboxing” - the box!

The Assembled Board

After a few days, I soldered the pins, and also assembled the aclyric case for the board, so here are some more closer look to the Alonzo board.

Next

In the next article, I will show you an example of blinking the LED light with scheme script in Alonzo, and talk about the programming experience to this board.