Please tell me he didn't just pull that out of the bag without an antistatic strap, and don't give me that "Oh these devices are not overly static sensitive" bit. Making sure he touched various component contacts was an added bonus. I get chills every time I see this with a piece of electronics, especially having been involved in electronics manufacturing for 20 years.
I can tell you that I did pull it without an anti-static strap, 'these devices are not overly static sensitive', none of my boards have ever died from a static discharge. Hack, I sometimes even touch them while running and never had a problem. Had I lived somewhere with dry heat or with a furry carpet, I would wear a strap.
pjc123, go change the filters in your clean room. The handling of this board did not appear to be in an environment that would generate vast amounts of static. Now I am sure we have all seen the same video of "static damage" taken with an electron microscope. Most of that footage is false and designed for people who do not understand how electricity going through a circuit actually works. So calm down and take it from someone who has also been involved in electronics manufacturing for 20+ years.
HP research lab did a study on effect of electrostatic discharges on electronic equipments many years ago. Their conclusion was without proper ESD protection, you will cause damage to the equipment. Each inidividual damage may not be significant enough to permanent damage the equipment but the accumulated damages over the life time of the equipment will be significant. They had also observed equipments handles without ESD protection had a significant higher percent of instability and intermittent fault towards the end of life time of the equipments. There is also a professional organisation http://www.esda.org/ working on improving protection against ESD. I am not associated with either HP or ESD and no longer in the electronic industry. This is just sharing what I know. It is your Udoo, feel free to handle it whichever way you prefer.
+1. This is exactly the issue. Failures can happen days, months or years later due to minor ESD damage, devices that have passed very stringent initial testing before being shipped. I worked on one line where they were carrying devices from one station to another on pink antistatic foam. Failure Mode Analysis of a larger than expected return of shipped devices months later showed antistatic damage; Changing around the line so that every device was carried from station to station in a "Faraday Box" virtually eliminated the problem, and shows the sensitivity of the issue. Like you said, its your UDOO, so do to it as you will.
Flamenawe, confirm/deny you made a warranty claim for your UDOO board claiming 'saliva damage in transit'? ;-)
