Hope everyone’s enjoying family time right now. I was holding onto this update because it seemed too short. Then I remembered that our long updates are about all the things that have gone wrong, and the systems that we have to navigate. No problems this time, so short it is.
Mechanicals
One of our bigger items is checked off. Over 10,000 individual parts are coming our way in the next month. 🎉
I’ve ordered the final case parts for Pickup and most of the sensor carts, and they’re being printed in Idaho. This will take about 5 weeks. Printing is so much slower than injection molding, and it’ll be dragged out a bit by the holidays in the US. But this isn’t the critical path now so they can take their time. For this big of an order, they’re shipping me some samples right now for me to give my approval.
It’s always a little nerve-wracking—we don’t have the money to reprint all that if there are mistakes. But I knew the parts were ready when some test pieces were coming back worse than the previous version — time to stop tweaking parameters.
The silicone buttons are also being produced. The design has been done for a while — just had to confirm that the fit and the action was good with the new main case. Waiting for a shipping confirmation from the producer — my only concern with these suppliers is that we’re a relatively high-touch, low-volume customer and so we are low priority.
Boards
We and the assembler got caught in a holiday schedule, but the golden master circuitboards are supposed to be on their way to us. If these are good, we’ll go full production on all boards.
This last design had some minor tweaks, mostly for mechanical fit, but this was an opportunity for the assembler to also test our manufacturing test rig we shipped them. Getting that up and running might be a sticking point for them, and this is one of those places where you have to work closely with Chinese companies, who really like to say “Yes, we can do that,” no matter what. Jeremy’s on it.
Next
With our limited time, the software side of things has been neglected, but with physical stuff off our plate (I’ve got a handful of components like cables and fasteners to procure) we’ve been back to code.
The kind of engineers that choose to work on their own small-batch products than within a larger company are jacks-of-all-trades and not always the best with strict product specs. We’ve been doing a lot of new architecture on this project, and it’s awkward coming together after starting from opposite ends of the stack (i.e. firmware and web UI). But once we’re done with that we’ll be making progress together again. It’ll be tested soon with my son’s science fair project, and we’re looking good for shipping in the spring.
We appreciate your understanding even as our schedule has slipped this far. Not all Kickstarters have such supportive backers, and we’re grateful. The new year will be a good one for all of us.
Crossposted from Pickup Kickstarter update #21