First of all, apologies to all of you for the delay with this project update. The month of April has brought several challenges that have impacted the production schedule for the product and, for the sake of transparency, I’ll explain to the best of my ability the different circumstances that have impacted the project.

Code Published in GitHub

First, some good news. The source code of the project is now accessible in our GitHub repo, so feel free to explore it. Expect some changes, especially related to potential fixes needed for improved production tests. The hardware repository has also been updated with the files applicable to the production units.

Electronic Components BOM Fulfillment and Trial PCBA

All of the electronic components in the BOM were already in the facilities of our PCBA contractor by the last week of March, ready to initiate production. As is normal, I requested a small initial run of only two boards to make sure everything was ready for mass production. This trial run was conducted in the first week of April without any problems in the assembly itself.

production samples with two changes from pre-production: epoxy via covering for improved solderability and the addition of serial numbers to the PCBs.

In parallel with the trial production, the purchase of the displays and the mechanical components were underway when two problems first became apparent:

First, the display supplier made a change in their production process and incorporated a different glass type, which had an impact on the contrast and color in the display when running the original firmware (the one ready for production!). They didn’t have enough stock of the “old” displays, so we rushed to implement a custom calibration for the display based on new specifications from the manufacturer. Fortunately, we managed to match the old one. The issue here is that it is very difficult to assess the quality of a display based on photos sent by the contract manufacturer. So, I requested they send me samples to verify myself, which added a two week delay before I could receive and test the new display. The good news is that the new display, with the new calibration, looks as good as the old display.

The second problem was with a color mismatch between the 2 mm and 3 mm blue acrylic pieces that form the case. This mismatch was obvious and it was not possible to source sheets with the same type of blue in these two different thicknesses. To avoid blocking on this issue, we decided to change the color of the internal laminates from blue to black, which has color consistency between the 2 mm and 3 mm sheets. I’ll let you decide if the units look better or not:

Testing Production Samples

With the production samples ready, we ran our automatic tests to check them and what should have been a simple step transformed into a very long and tortuous path…

First, the test didn’t complete because a component was soldered in the wrong orientation, then the USB communication test (which checks that all the USB 2 and USB 3 communication lines work properly) didn’t pass. The reason for that was the flash drive used by the contractor had a strange way of enumerating itself which the automatic tester was unable to detect automatically. Then the last issue, which is still unsolved, was that the production samples couldn’t reliably complete the automated testing, failing with communication interruptions and other random issues. This last problem was a big concern to us as it indicated an unidentified issue with production sample units that was not present in the pre-production samples, and with the additional disadvantage of debuging with the team in China. This all has cost us five weeks of remote analysis with the real cause still unidentified.

Until we can find the root cause of the problems, we are not going to move to mass production. We are committed to providing a quality product, even if this implies adding a delay to the delivery date. Though these circumstances prove to be frustrating as the start of mass production was close, the silver lining is that whatever the problem is, it was found before delivering to you.

The plan here is to run the production of three more boards and bring them, along with the two previous problematic boards, to our lab and perform a thorough investigation. We hope the problem is promptly identified and not complicated to solve. Moreover, we will inspect all the test tools (flash drive, power supply, cables, etc.) to make sure they run the tests flawlessly. Then we will send back the full test kit (including a configured computer) for use in mass production.

Unfortunately, all these setbacks mean a delay of the delivery date of at least two months (from June to August), especially considering other factors that could add more time due to the unpredictability of international shipment.

April Tariff Roller Coaster

The previous exposition of the technical issues faced in April are somehow expected in hardware development, not wanted, but nevertheless expected. Making hardware is a box of surprises, indeed! But what really added considerable concern was the introduction of new tariff policies from the US to the rest of the planet, especially to China. In the span of a couple of weeks, we saw tariffs change from 25% to 35% to 54% to 110% to 154%, just to get back to between (probably) 35% to 55% for electronic products (for the time being). The tariff scheme has changed more times than my firmware software versions, which is a lot to say! As of the date of writing (May 13), there seems to be a 90 days pause on tariffs which I hope is still valid by the time of the product ships.

We sincerely apologize for the unfortunate delay in product delivery and you can rest assured of our commitment to do everything in our power to identify the problem and implement appropriate solutions so we can resume production.