So up until a month ago, I was working on performance related aspects of Firefox OS (I'm an employee of Mozilla). The performance team did a team meetup in Toronto at the end of August, and one of the team members thought it would be cool to use this digital USB ammeter to measure current draw from our phones.

3D CAD Model

I said "I know how to do that stuff", and in short order whipped up a 3D model of a battery harness that would allow us to insert a shunt into the + line between the battery and the phone, and feed that shunt to the ammeter. I printed a couple versions of the harness on the in-office Replicator 2, and wasn't very happy with the print quality. I sold my Dimension uPrint earlier this year, so I ended up going to a commercial printing place and had it printed on a uPrint. It came out beautifully, of course, so I designed a little printed circuit board for it, and had that manufactured.

Python Ammeter Script

I wrote a simple python script to sample the data from the ammeter, and within a week I had a pretty neat setup...

Battery Harness

I demoed this setup at the work-week in Oslo at the beginning of September, and it seemed to be well-received.
After I got back from Oslo, I started work in earnest on this. We decided that the commercial ammeter didn't have the features we needed (specifically the ability to remotely disconnect and reconnect the battery line to force a phone restart), and although the company makes custom parts, having a single prototype to test with before ordering 200-300 boards wouldn't work for us. So, I sat down and started reading data sheets and ordering parts. My brother Dave Hylands (who also works for Mozilla on Firefox OS) has been an enormous help in all this.

Ammeter Schematic

As of today, I have prototyped (on a breadboard) all the parts I need to make this happen. We (Mozilla) ordered a commercial 3D printer, and once it gets here I'll be able to start cranking out models. I've designed the ammeter PCB, and have ordered the first iteration of it. I'm hoping to have enough time to populate the board before I leave for the Mozilla Summit next week, so I can bring it with me to show people (I'll be in Santa Clara).