Well, here I am: Sitting in the plane to Greece on my way trying to solve the case issues once and for all.
In case you didn't follow all the posts with tiny updates I made in the last news thread:
I gave the old company a deadline until January 15th to finish the cases and show that their cases will be 100% working and look good.
If they can't do that, then the moulds will be moved to the new company - and I want to do it while I here in Greece, so I can make sure that it really happens.
I know that they won't be able to finish the 500 transparent cases in time. They had 100 finished around christmas and mentioned they need at least 20 working days for the remaining 400.
And they closed down the company from Dec. 24th to Jan 7th... so yeah, you can do the math.
However, if they REALLY were interested in keeping the job, they'd either find someone who could continue the production during the holidays or at least reply to my mail.
I know from my contact that they didn't even read it before January 7th - even though I sent it to them a few days before the company went on holidays and they KNEW that I'm already mispleaased by the delay.
So yes, I told them I want to move the moulds January 16th and they should finish as many cases as possible - I don't really care about the rest (we can easily produce more transparent ones at the new company).
They probably still want to hold off somehow and try to keep the production here, so we might need to force our way through. I don't really like doing stuff like that, but it won't help.
I'm pretty sure the shoulder buttons still won't work properly for one simple reason: I noticed that the PCB isn't really kept in place inside the case.
The Pandora has some pegs that fix the PCB perfectly in place. Even without the keymat, it cannot move around and is always in the exact same position.
This isn't the case with the current Pyra case: The location of the PCB is basically defined by squeezing it between the keymat, case and metal plate.
This means that the position of the shoulder buttons can move a bit up and down depending on how you assemble it - and that's why it's pure luck if you have working shoulder buttons or not.
That's fine for prototypes, as you have the time to tweak during assembly until everything fits fine, but it's not suited for mass production.
Luckily, we already checked and it's not a hard thing to add: Adding some pegs means drilling holes into the mould (it's inverted), and if we manage to move the moulds on Jan 16th, we might even start fixing that the same day (or the day after).
I'll leave on Friday, so that would give us at least two days to work together on the fixes. I'm also staying the night directly in the house of the junior CEO, so we have plenty of time to discuss things
The most important days will be the next two... once the moulds have been moved, I feel a lot better!
So much for the cases - any news with the PCBs?
Well, just one quick thing: As we had some occassional backlight flickering, Nikolaus tried a different chip here (actually, the same we use in the Pandora) and this didn't only fix the flickering but also allows the backlight to be brighter then before. Also, the shutter-effect when lowering brightness below a certain level is gone as well
Apart from that, the PCBs are still finished, so nothing happened there
I'm not sure whether Nikolaus finished finalizing the BOM and Machine files needed by GC for the population (my main focus was on the cases...), but I'll check back with him.
He's also working on the Pyra Phone (see the thread here: ), which means he has time for that... so I can imagine that everything else is finished already.
Okay, so much for now.
I'll make sure to regularly post updates to this thread while I'm in Greece.
Wish me luck and let's get this thing done
In case you didn't follow all the posts with tiny updates I made in the last news thread:
I gave the old company a deadline until January 15th to finish the cases and show that their cases will be 100% working and look good.
If they can't do that, then the moulds will be moved to the new company - and I want to do it while I here in Greece, so I can make sure that it really happens.
I know that they won't be able to finish the 500 transparent cases in time. They had 100 finished around christmas and mentioned they need at least 20 working days for the remaining 400.
And they closed down the company from Dec. 24th to Jan 7th... so yeah, you can do the math.
However, if they REALLY were interested in keeping the job, they'd either find someone who could continue the production during the holidays or at least reply to my mail.
I know from my contact that they didn't even read it before January 7th - even though I sent it to them a few days before the company went on holidays and they KNEW that I'm already mispleaased by the delay.
So yes, I told them I want to move the moulds January 16th and they should finish as many cases as possible - I don't really care about the rest (we can easily produce more transparent ones at the new company).
They probably still want to hold off somehow and try to keep the production here, so we might need to force our way through. I don't really like doing stuff like that, but it won't help.
I'm pretty sure the shoulder buttons still won't work properly for one simple reason: I noticed that the PCB isn't really kept in place inside the case.
The Pandora has some pegs that fix the PCB perfectly in place. Even without the keymat, it cannot move around and is always in the exact same position.
This isn't the case with the current Pyra case: The location of the PCB is basically defined by squeezing it between the keymat, case and metal plate.
This means that the position of the shoulder buttons can move a bit up and down depending on how you assemble it - and that's why it's pure luck if you have working shoulder buttons or not.
That's fine for prototypes, as you have the time to tweak during assembly until everything fits fine, but it's not suited for mass production.
Luckily, we already checked and it's not a hard thing to add: Adding some pegs means drilling holes into the mould (it's inverted), and if we manage to move the moulds on Jan 16th, we might even start fixing that the same day (or the day after).
I'll leave on Friday, so that would give us at least two days to work together on the fixes. I'm also staying the night directly in the house of the junior CEO, so we have plenty of time to discuss things
The most important days will be the next two... once the moulds have been moved, I feel a lot better!
So much for the cases - any news with the PCBs?
Well, just one quick thing: As we had some occassional backlight flickering, Nikolaus tried a different chip here (actually, the same we use in the Pandora) and this didn't only fix the flickering but also allows the backlight to be brighter then before. Also, the shutter-effect when lowering brightness below a certain level is gone as well
Apart from that, the PCBs are still finished, so nothing happened there
I'm not sure whether Nikolaus finished finalizing the BOM and Machine files needed by GC for the population (my main focus was on the cases...), but I'll check back with him.
He's also working on the Pyra Phone (see the thread here: ), which means he has time for that... so I can imagine that everything else is finished already.
Okay, so much for now.
I'll make sure to regularly post updates to this thread while I'm in Greece.
Wish me luck and let's get this thing done
