We’re halfway through our campaign at this point, and we’re almost fully funded. To our more than 300 backers, thank you so much for your support!

As you may have seen in the news—and as discussed in the Risks & Challenges section of our campaign page—electronic components are facing widespread shortages worldwide. We have been keeping a close eye on the situation for months now and even went so far as to replace a few major components in the DFC design prior to launch.

Anticipating a successful campaign, we also submitted an order to secure enough microprocessors (our most critical component) for the first build. Despite our best efforts, the supply of that chip dried up between the time we submitted the order and the time it was executed. We have a hold on the next shipment, but it’s not expected until early September. Given that there are no other sources at the moment, we’re going to have to push our estimated ship date out to October 29th, which is a real bummer since we want to get your DFC into your hands as soon as we can.

Why not swap out components, you might ask? We’ve done it before, and we definitely considered doing it again. Unfortunately, for the microprocessor in particular, there are a number of reasons why it’s just not a practical solution: (1) there are no available drop-in replacements, (2) so using an alternative microprocessor would require a major board redesign, and (3) that redesign would push compliance testing out even further.

Over the past several months, we’ve seen the supply of some components fluctuate wildly, with new sources occasionally coming online prior to expected ship dates. We’re continuing to search high and low for this microprocessor and, with some luck, we hope to find a supplier that has sufficient quantity in stock. We’re also securing supplies of other critical components that are currently available in order to hedge against further disruption.

Thank you again for helping to make DFC a reality, and please know that we are doing everything we can to get yours out the door as soon as possible.