Of bare boards and investments (2011-10-13)


EvilDragon

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We're not slowing down here, things are happening and therefore, I'll summarize them for you :)


As usual, I'll be open about anything here - so if you have any further questions, just ask :)


1. Bare PCBs ordered and paid!


As mentioned in my last post, I've ordered and paid the bare PCB production, so we'll have the PCBs ready in-time for the prototype production run next month.


They should take about 4 - 6 weeks and when they're working fine, I will immediately order the big batch (1000), which will take another 4 weeks approximately.


This will make sure those will be ready for the production run in January as planned.


2. Investments coming along


The investments are coming along nicely.


Only three potential investors made a retreat so far, whereas 26 confirmed their investment, which adds to a total of 195,000 EUR we've got so far.


I'm still waiting for a confirmation from 15 more investors (which would add another 183,000 EUR) and 28 potential investors haven't even told me how much they are planning to invest.


So, will we get enough investments? Or will things get narrow?


Hard to tell right now. Statistically, with the remaining potential investors left, there should be more than enough money, based on the amount those 26 who confirmed already, invested (most of them were from Germany). Things would work out with 350K EUR quite nicely, though 300K EUR would also be enough.


However, we don't know yet whether and if those remaining investors will really invest.


They've got some things to check out, as tax things are a bit complicated when you're outside of Germany


.


If you're interested in investing as well, send a mail to info@openpandora.de. I'll send you the business plan, information about the profit share you can make (up to 40% interest with 10,000 Pandoras sold per year), etc.


So, what happens if I don't get enough investments together?


Well, there are still some more ways to get things going.


For example, we've got 17000 users subscribed to the newsletter. There might be some potential investors here as well, so I could ask here as well.


I could also ask for small donations. While not all might be interested in the Pandora anymore, there might be some who would still support the idea behind it. If only half of them donated 10 EUR, that would be another 85,000 EUR as well.


Also, crowd-funding like Kickstarter.com and similar sites exist today. Another option.


If just a bit of money is missing, I could also get a bank loan. And I'm still in contact with some bigger investors as well.


So yeah, there ARE more than one way to get things going, and as long as there's some life left within me, I'll continue to work on this :)


3. Preorders also coming along


As you probably know, preorders have started again.


So far, we got over 250 Preorders already - without ANY advertising at all and without sending the newsletter to the 17K subscribers.


That's impressive, if you ask me!


I think we'll see a lot more preorders once a few more press reviews will be out there (shipping some Pandoras to magazines next week), after the prototypes are working, after christmas, after delivery has started and after the Replay Expo 2011 in Blackpool. It doesn't seem to me we'll have any issues selling the Pandora at all :)


4. Moving parts


As mentioned, some parts for Batch 2 are lying at CircuitCo and need to be moved to Germany.


Those parts had all been delivered by the distributor EBV (a big german distributor), and thankfully, they are helping me moving these parts over.


They are currently organizing the transportation to Germany, which is great, as they have experts who know how to deal with customs, etc. Saves me a lot of time and nerves.


5. Meet us in UK!


As mentioned above, I will be at the Expo Replay 2011 on 5/6 November in Blackpool.


But I'm not alone - Craig will also be there as well as quite a few guys from the community (and of course, thousands of Retrogaming freaks).


We'll have the iControlPad and Pandoras there, so if you always wanted to meet us or want to see living Pandoras, it's well worth a visit!
 
So yeah, there ARE more than one way to get things going, and as long as there's some life left within me, I'll continue to work on this :)
THAT'S THE SPIRIT! We're with you! :wub:
 
Very positive stuff all round. :) I'm amazed at how investors have stepped up, and I really hope it elevates the project to where it should be. Each and every investor has my respect and gratitude. I'd be in there with you if I was able to.
 
Sounds great, can't wait till the world truly hears and see's what has been cooking at ED and Craigs (an of course all other contributers) place for the last 3 years :p
 
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ED, since you are open for questions, I'm just a bit curious about the timeline.

We're not slowing down here, things are happening and therefore, I'll summarize them for you :)


As usual, I'll be open about anything here - so if you have any further questions, just ask :)


1. Bare PCBs ordered and paid!


As mentioned in my last post, I've ordered and paid the bare PCB production, so we'll have the PCBs ready in-time for the prototype production run next month.


They should take about 4 - 6 weeks and when they're working fine, I will immediately order the big batch (1000), which will take another 4 weeks approximately.


This will make sure those will be ready for the production run in January as planned.

Rest assured, I don't mean to be negative or anything of the sort. I'm just STILL looking very forward to getting mine after almost 3 years.


The section header says: "bare PCB", I conclude not populated, is this correct?


What's the date the PCB production was given a go ahead(ordered)? (yes I did a few searches but I wasn't able to find another post confirming this :( )


"Add 4-6 weeks to that", does that include the "when they're working fine" or is the tweaking after the initial 4-6 weeks? Does that mean a test population will be done? (otherwise I'm not sure how you test such a complicated board to know if it's working fine..)


Then order 1000... again does this mean not populated?


Then production run... this is population of the boards, and then assembly of pandora in their sweet little cases. Is the assembly going to be done by the population company, or yourself? Will Craigx also participate in the assembly?


Thanks for any additional details you can give. :) And have a wonderful day!
 
None of this information interests me. What I want to know is when my pandora I ordered on April 29th, 2009 will arrive?


You guys have previous commitments that you are ignoring. How about fulfilling your previous obligations before Accepting new ones?
 
What I want to know is when my pandora I ordered on April 29th, 2009 will arrive?


You guys have previous commitments that you are ignoring. How about fulfilling your previous obligations before Accepting new ones?
From what I've read, they are trying to pipeline things.


It's not much effort to take new orders, they just go into a queue somewhere, and they have to get investments to stay alive.


Hopefully there will be news on dates soon (I'm wondering myself), but I guess it's just rough estimates until the new company figures out if they can produce the boards, and how quickly.
 
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None of this information interests me. What I want to know is when my pandora I ordered on April 29th, 2009 will arrive?

You guys have previous commitments that you are ignoring. How about fulfilling your previous obligations before Accepting new ones?

Ignoring might be a too hard word. They could go on producing all the firstbatchers first and be bankrupt in some months. I think this is not what you or anybody else wants, as you won't get your unit at all then.


So all these things are necessary!
 
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Good news so far, too bad I can't make it to Blackpool, got some good memories there....
 
3. Preorders also coming along


As you probably know, preorders have started again.


So far, we got over 250 Preorders already - without ANY advertising at all and without sending the newsletter to the 17K subscribers.


That's impressive, if you ask me!


I think we'll see a lot more preorders once a few more press reviews will be out there (shipping some Pandoras to magazines next week), after the prototypes are working, after christmas, after delivery has started and after the Replay Expo 2011 in Blackpool. It doesn't seem to me we'll have any issues selling the Pandora at all :)


5. Meet us in UK!


As mentioned above, I will be at the Expo Replay 2011 on 5/6 November in Blackpool.


But I'm not alone - Craig will also be there as well as quite a few guys from the community (and of course, thousands of Retrogaming freaks).


We'll have the iControlPad and Pandoras there, so if you always wanted to meet us or want to see living Pandoras, it's well worth a visit!
Combining these two points I'd really recommend that you get yourself a "booth" at FOSDEM at the beginning of next February in Brussels. It is the biggest meeting of open source devs of all of Europe. Several thousand devs tend to be around there and, if you got some pandora with you, you are likely to make some deals there and increase the interest of the devs. Make sure to advertise how easy coding for it and debugging of the software is due to stuff like ssh connections and a *full* Linux system.
 
4. Moving parts


As mentioned, some parts for Batch 2 are lying at CircuitCo and need to be moved to Germany.


Those parts had all been delivered by the distributor EBV (a big german distributor), and thankfully, they are helping me moving these parts over.


They are currently organizing the transportation to Germany, which is great, as they have experts who know how to deal with customs, etc. Saves me a lot of time and nerves.
Sorry if i'm pushing this a little, but will anybody try help recovering the remaining 1K boards from CC as well? or do you think it's better to just focus on the batch 2 parts?
 
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ED, since you are open for questions, I'm just a bit curious about the timeline.


Rest assured, I don't mean to be negative or anything of the sort. I'm just STILL looking very forward to getting mine after almost 3 years.


The section header says: "bare PCB", I conclude not populated, is this correct?

Correct. The PCBs will be populated once the bare PCBs are finished. Population for 1000 PCBs takes about 1-2 weeks.

What's the date the PCB production was given a go ahead(ordered)? (yes I did a few searches but I wasn't able to find another post confirming this :( )

The prototype test run will be done once the bare PCBs and all parts are at Global Components, that should be mid to end November.


This will work if I got enough investors until end of October (only need the confirmation until then, not the transferred money).

"Add 4-6 weeks to that", does that include the "when they're working fine" or is the tweaking after the initial 4-6 weeks? Does that mean a test population will be done? (otherwise I'm not sure how you test such a complicated board to know if it's working fine..)

Yes, there will be a test run and of course the remaining 1000 bare PCBs will only be ordered when those from the test run are working fine.


It's unlikely they will NOT work fine though, the PCB design is correct (as we already know), so there's no reason the bare PCBs shouldn't work.


As for the testing run, this is how things work:


* The first PCB will be populated and inspected for errors. If it's working fine, the next ones are being produced. If it's not working fine, some parts are not properly placed. These parts will be identified and the machine program will be tweaked.


* Then the next PCB will be populated with the tweaked settings and inspected for any errors. This continues until the machine runs places the parts perfectly on the PCBs.


* Normally, you only need 3 - 5 PCBs for that. We've got 15, so it's very unlikely it won't work :)

Then order 1000... again does this mean not populated?

Correct. PCBs area ALWAYS ordered unpopulated.


The parts will arrive at GC in December, so they should be in stock before the bare PCBs arrive. Production can then start immediately.

Then production run... this is population of the boards, and then assembly of pandora in their sweet little cases. Is the assembly going to be done by the population company, or yourself? Will Craigx also participate in the assembly?

I'll do the first 1000 Pandoras myself, as I can prepare most of it already.


I'll probably get help from friends and family as well.


From then on, GC will do the assembly as well, so I get finished Pandoras from them.

None of this information interests me. What I want to know is when my pandora I ordered on April 29th, 2009 will arrive?


You guys have previous commitments that you are ignoring. How about fulfilling your previous obligations before Accepting new ones?

We are not ignoring anything, but I can't explain the full plan with each newspost - that would fill pages of information already given.


How everything is planned has been posted a few weeks ago in this newspost.


If you read that, you'll find out that we need new orders to be able to fullfill the old orders as well.


With each batch, a part of the Pandoras will go to old and a part to new customers.


Sadly, there's no other way unless something donates (not invests) 600,000 EUR.

Combining these two points I'd really recommend that you get yourself a "booth" at FOSDEM at the beginning of next February in Brussels. It is the biggest meeting of open source devs of all of Europe. Several thousand devs tend to be around there and, if you got some pandora with you, you are likely to make some deals there and increase the interest of the devs. Make sure to advertise how easy coding for it and debugging of the software is due to stuff like ssh connections and a *full* Linux system.

Yes, stuff like this is definitely what I'm planning.

Sorry if i'm pushing this a little, but will anybody try help recovering the remaining 1K boards from CC as well? or do you think it's better to just focus on the batch 2 parts?

Right now, CC is trying to recover the remaining boards. We might try to do it here after the prototype run, but it's unknown if they are easy to fix.
 
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Very well, i thought the boards were just laying there gaining rust and just in need of transport to germany, but it seems like things in CC kept slipping. Good to hear things are rolling with GC, fortunatly people who gain interest in the pandora now won't have to go through a roller-coaster ride to get their unit.


Thanks again for letting people know about what's going on. :)
 
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It's unlikely they will NOT work fine though, the PCB design is correct (as we already know), so there's no reason the bare PCBs shouldn't work.

Well, there are a few potential issues such as the impedance of the traces for the wifi signals and the size of the solder pads for the shoulder-buttons.
 
It's unlikely they will NOT work fine though, the PCB design is correct (as we already know), so there's no reason the bare PCBs shouldn't work.

Well, there are a few potential issues such as the impedance of the traces for the wifi signals and the size of the solder pads for the shoulder-buttons.

Not really. We THOUGHT the WiFi was an impedance problem back then, but it was a wrong resistor.


Poor Michael Weston had to replace this resistor on 500 PCBs when we assembled units last year in UK...


The size of the solder pads for the shoulder buttons has been made smaller according to the specs of the buttons, so this shouldn't be any issue at all.
 
Combining these two points I'd really recommend that you get yourself a "booth" at FOSDEM at the beginning of next February in Brussels. It is the biggest meeting of open source devs of all of Europe. Several thousand devs tend to be around there and, if you got some pandora with you, you are likely to make some deals there and increase the interest of the devs. Make sure to advertise how easy coding for it and debugging of the software is due to stuff like ssh connections and a *full* Linux system.

Oooh, that's a lot closer to home then Blackpool, U.K., this got my vote :D
 
None of this information interests me. What I want to know is when my pandora I ordered on April 29th, 2009 will arrive?


You guys have previous commitments that you are ignoring. How about fulfilling your previous obligations before Accepting new ones?

Did you order it from Craig or from ED?


If you ordered it from ED then I'm sure he'd be happy to explain the order in which he intends to fulfil his outstanding commitments. If you ordered it from Craig then please understand that Open Pandora Ltd (Craig in the UK) is a separate entity from Open Pandora GmbH (ED in Germany). To find out how Craig intends to proceed when production moves to Germany then maybe try posting your questions in the ask Craig questions thread.


It would be really helpful if Craig could find it within himself to make a clear and unambiguous statement about the likely future of Open Pandora Ltd and as to his intentions relating to the future regarding the Pandora. Clarifying things such as how to get a refund, if he intends to continue selling Pandoras once his outstanding orders have been fulfilled etc. would be of huge benefit to the community and the project as a whole.
 
I'll do the first 1000 Pandoras myself, as I can prepare most of it already.


I'll probably get help from friends and family as well.
Wow, assembling 1000 Pandoras, that's a hard task, are you sure you can handle it in a decent time frame? Where do you take the time for it, you never have time like we know. ;)
 
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I'll do the first 1000 Pandoras myself, as I can prepare most of it already.


I'll probably get help from friends and family as well.
Wow, assembling 1000 Pandoras, that's a hard task, are you sure you can handle it in a decent time frame? Where do you take the time for it, you never have time like we know. ;)
Maybe they've secretly built a machine to do it and intend to open the blueprints once the team has made a fortune on producing Pandoras.
 
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Correct. PCBs area ALWAYS ordered unpopulated.


The parts will arrive at GC in December, so they should be in stock before the bare PCBs arrive. Production can then start immediately.
Has GC said that they'd start population as soon as they get the parts? That they're already gearing up to do so, or have their schedules set to start doing so? I'd hate for there to be another "misunderstanding" and GC doesn't actually start preparing to populate the boards until they arrive which ends up adding another 4 to 8 weeks. :(
 
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