Hello Element14 community. I welcome you to my 4th blog post as part of Experimenting with Gesture Sensors Design Challenge. In this blog post I will show stand which I build for making robust and stable position for MAX25405 Gesture Sensor Evaluation Kit. In previous blog posts I described my first thoughts about MAX25405 Gesture Sensor and its evaluation Kit from HW side (blog #2) and SW side (blog #3). In first blog I described my plans as part of this design challenge.
I originally did not want to make stand. I supposed to let sensor board just on the desk and do gestures in horizontal plane above the sensor board but very soon after I start experimenting with the Kit, I realized that this is not very good idea. When working with sensor board just placed on the desk I frequently moved and rotated board occasionally which change direction of gestures and also touching any other device like multimeter to the board cause device movement which is unwanted movement of the tiny board.
For making stand Maxim offers prepared 3D model of recommended stand. You can download STL model from Maxim website and print them on 3D printer. You get plastics stands which you can use for attaching sensor board.
But I have no 3D printer, so I had to invent alternative stand. Last over three months I spend with developing my Duratool Cabinet Storage Box Upgrade project and because some parts of mechanical building set remaining on my desk, I get idea very quickly. I build stand using the same mechanical set. I used only few parts this time. To be exact – I used only 10 parts from mechanical building set, 16× M4x10 screws and nuts, 2× M3x10 screws, 4x M3*5 plastic standoffs, 4x M2 standoffs with ~3mm hole and 3mm screw (6 mm in total length). And of course, I used (one) MAX25405EVKIT. Without MAX25405EVKIT this stand does not make sense. 
The biggest issue was with “reduction” from M2 holes (which are used on MAX25405EVKIT) to M3.5 holes which are used on the mechanical building set parts. Because I have not any standoff with this parameters I did another DIY solution. Note that M2 screws fall through M3.5 holes, so I cannot attach board directly to the mechanical building set. I resolved this by pushing M2 standoff to the plastic M3 standoff. At one end I had M2 screw (which I mounted to the MAX25405 with another standoff used as nut) and at the opposite side I have standard M3 hole which I used for pointing to the build set part.
Comparing with 3D Printed Stand
While I did not realize this at beginning this stand has some benefits over plastic stand available to 3D print. At first, it is adjustable. I can easily change angle of the sensor. Just unscrew joins and select different point. The other benefit which I realize is that this stand is more robust because mechanical stand is heavier than plastic one. In opposition it has one disadvantage – it is from metal. As you can see there are PCBs near metal which may be sensitive to shorts when touched with metal part. This applies especially for my power regulator which has multiple pinheads directly exposed. So, I must pay attention to this.
Result
At the end it looked as follows:
Last words
And this is all from this mini-blog as part of my serie about MAX25405 Gesture Sensor. Thank you for reading this blog post. In next blog post I plan to describe how to use evaluation kit from programs using UART API. In fact all data what you have seen in previous blog post (Blog #3: Experimenting with MAX25405 EVKIT GUI Program) was transmitted between evaluation kit and my computer using UART API. Next time I will show how to access the UART API directly without PC program and how to possibly use it in own programs or devices. Like in any my any other blog post, I welcome any feedback. If you have any feedback or question, just ask in comments below.
Next blog: Blog #5: Experimenting with MAX25405EVKIT UART API
