Money Money Money.

[DisgruntleElf]

It's very unlikely that OP will get the preorder frenzy they did when Pandora first went on sale. Since ED's real obstacle is going to be convincing canceled preorders to buy back in the real rush for new preorder sales won't come until Pandoras start rolling out again. If, and its a big if, Global Components can really meet their estimated quota then the 1st and 2nd batch preorders will get filled relatively quickly. Then the demand for Pandoras will begin. If Global Components runs into problems then the whole project will be at risk and it won't matter who gets their Pandora first.

 

[Exophase]

The blame is completely OpenPandora's - During the year and a half that we waited for the case, they were asked multiple time "what is going on with the boards?", and they always answered: "The boards are easy. No need to make them until the cases are ready."

See here:

http://www.gp32x.de...bout-the-boards
http://www.gp32x.de...rd-on-the-mobos

You're confusing PCB manufacturing with PCB population. All 4000 of the boards were made a long time ago. They were sitting around in CircuitCo's stores so long that they started to oxidize. When asked when the boards would be populated they said numbers that CircuitCo told them and couldn't keep to.

Nowhere on those threads do I see any indication of OP saying "we're delaying the PCB population process because the cases aren't ready."

 

[aq21]

You're confusing PCB manufacturing with PCB population.

Of course I am not.

In one of this threads craigix says that there are 1000 boards "waiting for cases". Why should a non-populated board wait for the cases?

In another thread he says: "There really won't be anything exciting to report on the boards until after the cases are given the thumbs up." This clearly means that it is OP's decision to delay the population of the boards.

 

[kyuu]

aq21: It seems to me that you are jumping to conclusions. You have no arguments so far, only your personal speculations based on some vague statements from Craig who is known for his cryptical messages. I don't believe that the OPT would deliberately delay the production process knowing that CircuitCo will fail to meet the deadline.

I'm not saying that the OPT didn't make any wrong decisions, they probably did. But blaming them for CircuitCo's failure, which was the decisive factor, is just __plain_wrong__.

 

[Exophase]

Of course I am not.

In one of this threads craigix says that there are 1000 boards "waiting for cases". Why should a non-populated board wait for the cases?

In another thread he says: "There really won't be anything exciting to report on the boards until after the cases are given the thumbs up." This clearly means that it is OP's decision to delay the population of the boards.

Sorry, I guess I'm just not reading those quotes like you are... I mean, I do think Craig has painted the situation a lot more optimistically than it really was. Part of that due to him believing things were better than they were, and maybe part of that is a subconscious or conscious desire to placate people. But no matter how positively or negatively he viewed the situation that doesn't have any impact on actual progress. There's no reason to think they told CC to not populate the boards, how on earth would that benefit anyone?

The thing with the report on the number of populated boards waiting for cases is that I'm pretty sure CC outright lied about the number they had done, not just the rate at which they'd be doing new ones. I remember there was supposed to be over a thousand completed and in reality there were only something like 200. You can't blame OP for this either..

 

[DisgruntleElf]

Sorry, I guess I'm just not reading those quotes like you are... I mean, I do think Craig has painted the situation a lot more optimistically than it really was. Part of that due to him believing things were better than they were, and maybe part of that is a subconscious or conscious desire to placate people.

You know I'm really quite surprised you keep coming to Craig's defense. There were was a post I can recall where he attempted to paint you as a Pandora bad guy. It wasn't the lying that got Craig into this spot as I do believe that members of the community understood that it was necessity for Pandora's survival. The ill will for Craig, as probably most of the canceled orders, came from his outbursts and yes, some members do deliberately provoke him. For me personally I really couldn't get over his attack on Vimacs. Here was a developer working on Pandora for FREE plus preorder a Pandora out of his own pocket. A really low moment for this community. Vimacs definitely showed he was the better person.
What really soiled the spirit on these forums is when the members of the community rallied behind Craigs attacks. Some members still do. Craig did divide and drive community members away. That he is too blame for. I say good luck to ED because his biggest obstacle to renewing Pandora sales is to undue all the damage Craig has done(his ego is not into apologies) and reunite this community if there is any chance of Pandora's survival. And that will be no ease feat because Craig is still part of the team(calling the shots) and a single outburst from him will bring all of EDs hard work crashing down.

 

[Exophase]

It's no secret that I don't like a lot of what Craig has said and done, including the things you mention DisgruntleElf.. And I don't like when Craig posts about how badly he's treated and everyone comes in to console him and shame his opponents. Well, that should be no surprise based on the posts I make in threads like that..

But I don't oppose people based on principle or anything like that, if someone is being represented in some way I don't agree with I'm probably going to say something against it. If you want a maybe more relatable example of someone who follows this principle WizardStan's posts are probably a good place to look. I just think it's important to be fair and judge actions rather than people. But if you want to look at it another way - this doesn't apply to me, but just for the sake of argument - if you take every opportunity to attack someone you don't like regardless of whether or not they deserve it people aren't going to take you seriously when they do deserve it. And staying silent when they're being attacked by someone else for something you don't thing is deserved is almost the same as attacking them. Here's another way you can see it.. if you're open to finding the good and value in people regardless of what they've done you'll gain valuable assets and insights in ways you wouldn't have, and maybe in ways others aren't. These are both pretty personally motivated things and honestly I'm not that personally motivated, outside of my love of random arguing (so I only actually take it personally when people attack my right to argue ;p)

(but yeah, I agree with most of what you said..)

 

[aq21]

aq21: It seems to me that you are jumping to conclusions. You have no arguments so far, only your personal speculations based on some vague statements from Craig who is known for his cryptical messages. I don't believe that the OPT would deliberately delay the production process knowing that CircuitCo will fail to meet the deadline.

I'm not saying that the OPT didn't make any wrong decisions, they probably did. But blaming them for CircuitCo's failure, which was the decisive factor, is just __plain_wrong__.

Why do you persist in trying to defend OP by incorrect statements?

Here's another member of the team, MWeston, explaining that OpenPandora chooses not to populate the boards until the cases are ready. He also explains that it is better to store the boards unpopulated.

http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?/topic/51311-what-about-the-boards/page__view__findpost__p__795990

 

[kyuu]

aq21: Can you elaborate what is incorrect about my statement, please? I did say that OPT probably did some wrong decisions, but they are still not responsible for CircuitCo's failure with the PCBs. Is that incorrect?

Here's another member of the team, MWeston, explaining that OpenPandora chooses not to populate the boards until the cases are ready. He also explains that it is better to store the boards unpopulated.

http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?/topic/51311-what-about-the-boards/page__view__findpost__p__795990

He explaines that the process of building the boards was "well understood" at that point and could have been "done very quickly".
He also mentions that PCBs were not considered the bottleneck at that point, so obviously there was no need to build the boards as long as the cases were not available. MWeston is a professional and knows what he is talking about, so I would trust his words and his decision.
Apparently everything was setup and ready to be built very quickly and all they were waiting for were the cases from the "damn plastics company".

Now explain me, why it was a bad decision to wait for the cases? You said it yourself: MWeston explained that storing so many populated boards would have been a problem, so - according to my interpretation - apart from the fact that the process of building the boards was well understood and could have been done very quickly at that time, the storage problem was an additional factor that finally led to the decision to wait for the cases.

Also explain, even if they would have started building the PCBs without waiting for the cases, how on earth would have this affected the problem with CircuitCo failing miserably in the end?

 

[aq21]

He explaines that the process of building the boards was "well understood" at that point and could have been "done very quickly".
He also mentions that PCBs were not considered the bottleneck at that point, so obviously there was no need to build the boards as long as the cases were not available. MWeston is a professional and knows what he is talking about, so I would trust his words and his decision.
Apparently everything was setup and ready to be built very quickly and all they were waiting for were the cases from the "damn plastics company".

So they thought that the cases process will take a month and it took a year and a half. How come they still count on the boards process taking a month? At that time, they must have been able to realize that manufacturing does not work like that. Many non-"professionals" on this forum told them that.

Now explain me, why it was a bad decision to wait for the cases? You said it yourself: MWeston explained that storing so many populated boards would have been a problem, so - according to my interpretation - apart from the fact that the process of building the boards was well understood and could have been done very quickly at that time, the storage problem was an additional factor that finally led to the decision to wait for the cases.

Also explain, even if they would have started building the PCBs without waiting for the cases, how on earth would have this affected the problem with CircuitCo failing miserably in the end?

If all their suppliers (cases, boards, nubs, bank) failed miserably in the end, perhaps we should look at the common factor?

Did you not hear that having the boards wait unpopulated caused them to oxidize, and is likely the cause for the high failure rate:

http://boards.openpandora.org/index.php?/topic/4058-wifi-tests-and-circuitco-2011-06-17/page__view__findpost__p__74948

Is this a new phenomenon? Was it known in 2009? Is it something that a "professional" that "knows what he is talking about" should have known about?

Regardless of how slow CC is, if they started 6 months earlier, they would have been 6 months ahead at any given time.

 

[WizardStan]

So they thought that the cases process will take a month and it took a year and a half. How come they still count on the boards process taking a month? At that time, they must have been able to realize that manufacturing does not work like that. Many non-"professionals" on this forum told them that.

The major difference is that the case manufacturer was a Chinese company with which they had difficulty communicating. CircuitCo is an American company that they were able to maintain regular communications with, at least to start. It wasn't until the project started going south that they really stopped answering emails.

If all their suppliers (cases, boards, nubs, bank) failed miserably in the end, perhaps we should look at the common factor?

The common factor is that OPT is a small company that doesn't have money to buy higher priorities at bigger plants. There's still no reason to expect the companies they do hire to act unprofessionally, however. And the only company that has actually failed them is CircuitCo, everything else was a fair lesson in development.

Is this a new phenomenon? Was it known in 2009? Is it something that a "professional" that "knows what he is talking about" should have known about?

I'm pretty sure it was known, but with CircuitCo promising they could populate boards at 500 per week (and that is an entirely reasonable number, this very company was making BeagleBoards at an even faster rate for a while so there was no reason to think they couldn't at least get half that, and for a time they did) it really wasn't a concern, and it is a much, much greater risk to leave populated boards in storage than unpopulated boards for a short time, so they hesitated. Then the cases came and they gave the green light on the boards, they started getting populated, and Pandora's were going out. Then the nub problem was detected and population was halted. The new nub company acted entirely professionally, apologized for their mistake, and redid all the nubs at their own cost. While this was going on, CircuitCo was told to continue populating the boards minus the nubs. By December, 6 months later, CircuitCo said all boards had been populated and were just waiting on nubs. January is when the new nubs were finally fully certified and shipped to CircuitCo where it was discovered that CircuitCo had in fact done absolutely no work during those 6 months.
Unlike every other company OPT dealt with, CircuitCo outright lied and it wouldn't have helped to start 6 months earlier if they took 6 months to do absolutely nothing while waiting for nubs even when they were told to continue and said that they would continue. In fact, an even unluckier scenario would have arisen if they had completed the population of the boards before the cases were ready: they'd have populated the entire first batch with the bad nubs and a disturbing number of them would be failing by now.

 

[kyuu]

So they thought that the cases process will take a month [...]

MWeston only wrote that building the boards should be done very quickly, not that it will take a month. Show me your source, please.

[...] and it took a year and a half.

Can you show me a source for when they ordered the cases and for when the actually received the cases, please?

How come they still count on the boards process taking a month?

Because:

[...]please be aware that building the boards is a well understood process at this point and done very quickly.

And because the case manufacturing company has nothing to do with the PCB manufacturing company.

And again: Where did you get that "month" from?

At that time, they must have been able to realize that manufacturing does not work like that. Many non-"professionals" on this forum told them that.

I highly doubt that the "non-professionals" know how manufacturing works. I'm one of those non-professionals and I don't know and can only speculate. If you know, then explain me how manufacturing works, please.

MWeston feared that his words could be misunderstood and apparently he was right to do so:

As usual, I have to fear the backlash from misunderstanding my words and I have to read over what I type 10 times before posting it but keep in mind that most of you don't and aren't expected to truly understand this process.

There was probably even a greater misunderstanding of Craig's and EvilDragon's words.

If all their suppliers (cases, boards, nubs, bank) failed miserably in the end, perhaps we should look at the common factor?

Wait, please, there are a lot of important points here.

1. All of the cases were finally delivered, weren't they? EvilDragon wrote here that "it was a hazzle until everything was working" (WizardStan also mentions above a communication problem due to the company being Chinese), but in the end everything was working and "new orders without any changes" would "work flawlessly". That's a different story than with CircuitCo.

2. As far as I know the nubs manufacturing company went bankrupt, didn't they? WizardStan also mentions above that there was a problem with bad nubs, but the nubs manufacturing company fixed everything on their own behalf. Again, a different story than with CircuitCo.

3. What was the problem with the bank? I have read that the bank froze the money in the beginning due to too many people transferring relatively small amounts of money. Is that what you mean? I don't know the details, but this seems to me to be the fault of the bank and the OPT sorted it out as quickly as they could, didn't they? Apart from that, how does this have anything to do with the parts suppliers?

You can't just measure everything by the same yardstick. And calling the OPT to be the source for every problem the Pandora production had to face so far can't be taken serious, at least I can't do so.

Did you not hear that having the boards wait unpopulated caused them to oxidize, and is likely the cause for the high failure rate:

http://boards.openpandora.org/index.php?/topic/4058-wifi-tests-and-circuitco-2011-06-17/page__view__findpost__p__74948

Is this a new phenomenon? Was it known in 2009? Is it something that a "professional" that "knows what he is talking about" should have known about?

It is also something that a company like CicuitCo - who was going to build the boards, after all - should have known about and take preventions. I'm sure there is a way to pretreat oxidated boards before sending them through the build process. The responsibility for the high failure rate due to oxidation - as I see it - takes still CircuitCo.

Any German company here would have taken into consideration such problems and would have taken actions to prevent them to affect the build process.

But apart from that, there was actually a reason not to populate the boards beforehand:

All 4000 boards have not been populated yet. It actually becomes an issue with storage to have so many boards sitting built all at once. They have to be kept somewhere which tends to be awkward because boards must sit in ESD safe trays on grounded carts (remember that picture of the 80/105?). Issues with humidity control are important because parts are no longer sitting in sealed bags, although they are already soldered so it is more of a general storage thing.

Did you forget about it?

Regardless of how slow CC is, if they started 6 months earlier, they would have been 6 months ahead at any given time.

That's a completely baseless statement. Not only is it not very smart to claim that by starting building the boards 6 months earlier, they would have been 6 months ahead at any given time (nothing can be predicted like this), there was at least one good reason to wait, see above. And even if they had started to build the boards beforehand, this would have no effect on the problem with the plastics company, or the problem with the nubs, or the problem with the bank, or the communication barrier with CircuitCo, or the other unknown factors which led to the high failure rates of the PCBs (oxidation was not the only one, according to EvilDragon: "Most issues they have with the boards right now is due to oxidation").

 

[aq21]

And again: Where did you get that "month" from?

Mainly from them taking orders on October 2008 with expected delivery in November 2008 (Xmas of same year as an unrealistic worse case scenario).

I highly doubt that the "non-professionals" know how manufacturing works. I'm one of those non-professionals and I don't know and can only speculate. If you know, then explain me how manufacturing works, please.

I am also a non-professional, but I did work five years for a company that styled itself as the "second largest electronic manufacturing services provider in the world".

Murphy's law is: Everything takes longer than you expect.

An obvious and well known corollary, ignored by OpenPandora, is that if you have two independent parts, one needs 6 months to manufacture and the other needs one month, you start both of them immediately, you don't wait five months to start working on the latter.

3. What was the problem with the bank? I have read that the bank froze the money in the beginning due to too many people transferring relatively small amounts of money. Is that what you mean? I don't know the details, but this seems to me to be the fault of the bank and the OPT sorted it out as quickly as they could, didn't they? Apart from that, how does this have anything to do with the parts suppliers?

They took at least six months to sort it out. That is quickly in geological terms, no doubt. And their "sorting it out" did cost a lot of preorderers fees of 30-50$ on a 300$ order. craigix did claim that the bank issue cause delays.

The banks are relevant to show that they had problems with whoever they did business with.

Now they again give completely unrealistic time estimates assuming everything goes smoothly with the new board manufacturers.

But apart from that, there was actually a reason not to populate the boards beforehand:

Of course there was a reason, but now they find out that there was also a reason to populate the boards.

 

[WizardStan]

craigix did claim that the bank issue cause delays.

Take everything that Craig said and forget he said it. He's a suit, through and through. Don't mistake me, he's a good guy and his specific breed of insanity is probably the only reason anyone got their Pandora at all, but at this point in time it is obvious that most of what he said was said out of necessity and not necessarily facts.

Of course there was a reason, but now they find out that there was also a reason to populate the boards.

Which they wanted to happen! CircuitCo said that all boards were populated back in December, minus the nubs. If a company is going to lie about their practices there is not a whole lot anyone can do until it is too late, as it is now. They lied about the boards being populated, and then lied about the boards still being good, and then lied about how many they could work on per week.
Personally, the only thing they should have started six months earlier was finding a new population facility when they found out that CircuitCo was lying to them. Everyone encouraged ED to begin the process, but where Craig is hard driving insanity, ED is passive and forgiving and wanted to give CircuitCo another chance to do what they said they would do. If you want to blame them for something that actually could have been foreseen and avoided, blame them for this and this only: everything else that you are damning them for was only problematic in hindsight.

 

[kyuu]

I am also a non-professional, but I did work five years for a company that styled itself as the "second largest electronic manufacturing services provider in the world".

As the janitor?

Murphy's law is: Everything takes longer than you expect.

You know, most of the time in real life, worst case scenarios don't occur, but only in those rare cases people remember Murphy's Law, which is why it seems to be legit.

OP was too optimistic, though, that can't be denied. Still, that doesn't make them implicitly the source for all problems. If that's your point, then your point is invalid.

An obvious and well known corollary, ignored by OpenPandora, is that if you have two independent parts, one needs 6 months to manufacture and the other needs one month, you start both of them immediately, you don't wait five months to start working on the latter.

Again: They had to wait for the cases before building the boards, because else there would have been the storage issue mentioned by MWeston here.

It doesn't matter how many generalized pearls of wisdom you are going to bring up, you still have to face the specific situation back then.

The banks are relevant to show that they had problems with whoever they did business with.

1. The bank, the cases company, the PCB company and the nubs company were the only ones OP did business with?

2. Stop hiding the details behind your generalized statements. OP was too optimistic, agreed. But they are not responsible for the mistakes the manufacturers made.

Now they again give completely unrealistic time estimates assuming everything goes smoothly with the new board manufacturers.

Now is a different time and with they you mean EvilDragon. Craig doesn't seem to be involved that much anymore.
Now a German company is responsible for the build process, not CircuitCo. German companies tend to be reliable and have a high quality assurance.
Now EvilDragon has a much better communication with the board manufacturer and I highly doubt they will lie to him.

Sure, things can still go wrong, but there is no point in being too pessimistic now.

Of course there was a reason, but now they find out that there was also a reason to populate the boards.

You are wording it like if they are regretting not having started the population of the boards before the cases arrived back then. Show me the source where you got that from.

 

[EvilDragon]

I won't go into details to each reply, but I'll add some stuff:

CC claimed they can populate 500 PCBs a week, which would be 1 month for ALL 4000 PCBs. This also is a possible quantity for a proper production company. There was absolutely NO reason to produce the PCBs before the cases had been greenlighted. Case production takes over a month, so PCB production could easily be done at the same time. As Michael mentioned, you have to pay for proper storage of electronics, so it would just have added to the costs to have the PCBs lying around.

Once the cases had been given the green light, PCB production started immediately, but sadly (due to the faulty nubs), had to be stopped. That was last year August. CC tried to act nice and confirmed that they will continue the production even without the nubs and have everything finished October 18th, 2010. That didn't happen. They agreed to do that until December 2010, but again, they didn't care.
They finally started population when the nubs were there. But they couldn't do 500 per week, merely 700 per month, which was still okay.
However, as the bare PCBs were ready in March 2010, they started to oxidate after a year. CC continued to populate, but had a crazy failure rate of about 30% now (thanks to the oxidated PCBs).

The funny thing: When I started the production of the iCP in Germany, the company told me that it's a good idea to have spare bare PCBs on stock to save time with further productions, but that they shouldn't be lying around for a longer time than 10 months because they start to oxidize.
They would suggest to throw away bare PCBs that are too old...

The Pandora is a very complicated PCB. It's freaking crazy to just THINK about to continue to populate them when they start oxidizing.... as it will make things A LOT more expensive than just scrapping the PCBs and ordering new ones.

Our last order to CC was to finish producing ALL PCBs ASAP. That was last year in August.
We got the confirmation for that from them, that they will be finished without the nubs October 18th. They even told us early October that thousands of boards were already finished (haha).
And they kept saying they can do 500 a week once everything is setup.

However, they delivered boards were even parts like the battery connector or volume wheel was missing. And they're doing a VISUAL INSPECTION (well, at least we're paying for that!)

So, as a summary:

1. If they did as they promised last year, NONE of the oxidation issues hadn't occured. Not even if they only produced 100 PCBs per week. But not only did they break their promise, they even lied to us and mentioned they have thousands of boards finished, which was clearly not the case.

2. If they didn't continue to populate the oxidized boards but would've scrapped them and ordered new ones, the biggest issue right now also hadn't occured. If they warned us what would happen when they continue to populated them, we'd have ordered new ones.

3. They deliver boards with visible failures (like missing volume wheels). Something that should never happen with ANY PCB production company.

Please let me know where the last three points mentioned are the fault of the OpenPandora team.

 

[Orkie]

CC claimed they can populate 500 PCBs a week, which would be 1 month for ALL 4000 PCBs.

Pandora bends spacetime!

 

[WizardStan]

That's a Pandora month, which is actually 2 months, which is actually 3 years.

 

[Darkknight512]

Hey ED, this is mostly for my own information, but I thought the Pandora PCB's were gold plated on top of the copper, at least I have heard that it only costs a few extra cents per board and should fix the oxidation problem completely.

Why was this not done, or was it just deemed unnecessary since CC said they were capable of finishing everything in 1 month.

 

[Akabei]

Pandora bends spacetime!

That's a Pandora month, which is actually 2 months, which is actually 3 years.

Even, if I would only be here for comedy reasons, this forum would be the best. :lol: