It’s been a while, time for another manufacturing update!

Kingtop has finished assembly of the first batch of ManT1S rev. 5 boards, and they are on their way to me as I’m writing this. They sent me the picture below for inspection of the mass produced parts:

Looking good! In the meantime, I have also designed and assembled the programming and test fixture for the ManT1S boards, so I can get started with that as soon as they arrive:

As you can see, the programming and test fixture involves a ManT1S-Bridge for power and networking, a bed-of-nails where the units to be programmed and tested can be connected, and a Brother P-touch label printer. The latter was added to make getting started with the ManT1S even more convenient: every ManT1S will be shipped with a little sticker as shown at the bottom of the picture included. This sticker shows the default network name of the unit (in case your router supports name lookup from the hostname reported during DHCP), and also the unit’s MAC address in case you need to look up the network name or IP address yourself. Very convenient!

For the ManT1S-Bridge, the hangup with the PMS150C vs G question has finally been resolved! Padauk released a new version of their IDE with a new Writer application, and with this new software PMS150G programming magically started working as it should have all along. So, I was able to convert some of my prototypes and confirm that the PMS150G works just fine in this application. The order for pre-programmed PMS150G chips has been placed with Sino-Mos, though I currently have no lead time from them for when they’ll get delivered to Kingtop.

In the meantime, production units of the ManT1S-Gadget accessory have also arrived and been packaged to be included with all kit orders:

All in all, good progress has been made, but thinking about what still needs to happen (lots of programming and testing, and completed manufacturing and testing of the ManT1S-Bridges), I do not think a delivery date of April 17 is realistic at this point. I expect mid-May to be a good new target date for when rewards will start shipping to backers.