A schedule! For real! (2011 - 02 - 28)


I think you will always want this no matter what.


I canceled and reordered.
 
Why do I feel like I'm waiting for Godot?


I'm not going to cancel though, it feels like we're almost there for real this time. I'm supposed to be around position 1900 so it shouldn't be much longer in theory.
 
Do what I did when I ordered last April and was assured I'd receive my Pandora by May - I actually told everyone it was still expected to take another year. In truth, I kind of believed and hoped that wouldn't be true, but I do at least look like less of a tosser to my relatives than if I'd been telling them "2 months™".


EDIT: Maybe they were right, maybe I'll recieve it by May this year....
 
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delete: should have used pm first..
 
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Well, do I understand this well...


Ordering at the iControlPad shop means ordering a Premium Pandora, right ?


Will it mess things up if I order a premium in addition to the one I'm expecting ?


Will it speed up things for the non-premium, as well for the whole project ? I hope so much it will...


Any answer ?
 
After all that, after second tought, I decided to go for premium.


I'm now waiting fort my Pandora to come, and I'll gladly tell you how well it is worth the wait (I do not doubt it will...)


More than that, I'll be holding a conference on Linux on ARM at the next Solutions Linux at Paris la Défense, no doubt the Pandora will be my guest star... I'd like not to rely on a GP2X for ARM native compilation !!!


I'm sure you won't mind mine showing the box :)
 
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After all that, after second tought, I decided to go for premium.


I'm now waiting fort my Pandora to come, and I'll gladly tell you how well it is worth the wait (I do not doubt it will...)


More than that, I'll be holding a conference on Linux on ARM at the next Solutions Linux at Paris la Défense, no doubt the Pandora will be my guest star... I'd like not to rely on a GP2X for ARM native compilation !!!


I'm sure you won't mind mine showing the box :)

It's arriving tomorrow. Can't wait to play with it, I'll provide my review on Monday :)


By the way, did you write "Hope" inside the packaging box ? :)
 
Also I do not like the idea of trying to fix the broken boards, it could lead to more problems and people returning their Pandora's for fixes n such, this project has had enough problems to last a century.

It makes good sense to try to fix the broken boards, for a number of reasons.

  • Fixing the broken boards means identifying what went wrong. This information can be used to improve the production process. Less failed boards means they increase the capacity of the shipments to OPL.
  • As I understand it, CC don't get paid for boards they don't deliver, so every discard costs them money.
  • I suspect OPL have probably already paid for many of the components used, (eg nubs) so every discard where those parts are not recovered also costs OPL money.
  • If the boards can be fixed to the point where they pass all the quality control checks, that means they will have that many more boards they can include in the next shipment.



To my mind it wouldn't make sense not to try to fix the broken boards on a production run this small.
When building boards in most production runs expect likely the largest it does not make sense not to try to fix boards. The terminology "broken" is a little misleading. A board that doesn't work is likely what is called "broken".. and that is what the end user would say too. This could be as simple as a discrete part like a resistor could be tomb stoned... one end lifted. Or a single pin on a chip could not be soldered. A lot of scrape is small process problem is causing the dropout. It is also difficult to hone the process on a small run.


I would question the openpandora team on how the manufacturing process is setup. Are you using in circuit test, flying probe, xray, boundry scan, or automated visual scans to detect manufacturing failures? Some of these may be expensive to set up for such a small run.


Assuming you are doing none of the above, how complete is your factory test process and does it allow reasonably easy debugging to the component level? Or is it more are works/broke test. I'm just trying to understand you production throughput issues.


Fixing non-conforming product is common in production facilities. Honing the production process to minimize the % of non-conforming product improves product quality and profitability. There is a lot involved to make a product that is producible.
 
I would question the openpandora team on how the manufacturing process is setup. Are you using in circuit test, flying probe, xray, boundry scan, or automated visual scans to detect manufacturing failures? Some of these may be expensive to set up for such a small run.


Assuming you are doing none of the above, how complete is your factory test process and does it allow reasonably easy debugging to the component level? Or is it more are works/broke test. I'm just trying to understand you production throughput issues.


Fixing non-conforming product is common in production facilities. Honing the production process to minimize the % of non-conforming product improves product quality and profitability. There is a lot involved to make a product that is producible.

According to CC, they are visually inspected (I doubt it is automatic though, as sometimes parts on the boards are missing), they do a bed of nails and they also have a special setup where the LCD is connected and various tests (speaker, SD Cards, WiFi, etc.) are being done. Do visual and functional test basically.


Though I think they only do the bed of nails test if something is broken and doesn't work.


They might also have X-Ray for finding problems on PCBs, since they fixed some boards where the OMAP wasn't properly seated, etc., and I have no idea how you could find that out without X-Ray :)
 
Though I think they only do the bed of nails test if something is broken and doesn't work.

That sounds like a big risk - functional test isn't going to spot the same problems that bed of nails should be finding.

Well, most of the stuff happening in the Pandora is in the SoC. Then the SoC is communicating with the other components. Check that communication and the board SHOULD be fine. They also use the testing points MWeston placed on the PCBs.


It might be that they also use the bed of nails for every unit, I don't know. But we got some units with weird issues, I think they wouldn't have passed that test.


But maybe those were just a few boards where the test had not properly been done.
 
Though I think they only do the bed of nails test if something is broken and doesn't work.

That sounds like a big risk - functional test isn't going to spot the same problems that bed of nails should be finding.

Well, most of the stuff happening in the Pandora is in the SoC. Then the SoC is communicating with the other components. Check that communication and the board SHOULD be fine. They also use the testing points MWeston placed on the PCBs.


It might be that they also use the bed of nails for every unit, I don't know. But we got some units with weird issues, I think they wouldn't have passed that test.


But maybe those were just a few boards where the test had not properly been done.

since the boards have been sitting around it for a while before getting cooked with the parts maybe some boards had some weak hair-thin weld contacts that worked fine but broke off at the slight vibration and/or temperature changes during transport.
 
After all that, after second tought, I decided to go for premium.


I'm now waiting fort my Pandora to come, and I'll gladly tell you how well it is worth the wait (I do not doubt it will...)


More than that, I'll be holding a conference on Linux on ARM at the next Solutions Linux at Paris la Défense, no doubt the Pandora will be my guest star... I'd like not to rely on a GP2X for ARM native compilation !!!


I'm sure you won't mind mine showing the box :)

Hey I got a question for you I just went premimun today so when you went premimun how long did it take to arrive? Did it arrive in 7 days like they said?? Let me know the details cause I love the project but I can't wait any longer you know what I mean!
 
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Hey I got a question for you I just went premimun today so when you went premimun how long did it take to arrive? Did it arrive in 7 days like they said?? Let me know the details cause I love the project but I can't wait any longer you know what I mean!
It usually ships within 7 business days. Get the UPS shipping upgrade unless you want to wait about two weeks additional for transit. UPS should have it to you within 2-3 days tops.
 
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