I'm still alive, even I didn't even find the time to follow much on the boards here or post stuff...
I had TONS of work during the last few weeks and even had a few days where I was more like a Zombie than anything else, but Nikolaus has cotinued to work on stuff, zmatt has reimplemented his rotation hack (so the Pyra is finally fully usable again!) and aTc has always quickly updated the kernels.
So, here's a quick update of the current status.
Let's start with the good news first...
The PCBs
These seem to work rock solid now with the current kernel. All the hardware features we tested work fine, all bugs seem to have been fixed, so I guess we can really call the PCBs fully finished and ready for mass production!
Nikolaus made one small change / bugfix to the Display board: It was flickering sometimes under high load. It turned out that the PWM wouldn't handle the power the LCD needed which caused the flickering.
And it was also shuttering when the display brightness was dim due to the frequency the PWM used.
The PWM is now replaced (just one chip on the display board) which increases the maximum brightness of the LCD and also provides a smoother, flicker-free backlight.
We also received a production report from Global Components which show potential issues for production (pads too close to each other, etc.)
Luckily, these are just small changes, the layout doesn't change, only some components are being moved around a few 0.2mm, so no new prototypes are needed (no worries
)
Nikolaus is now working on wrapping up all the production files: Cleaning up the part lists (some parts have changed), implementing the results from the production report into the design files, etc.
We plan to have them finished within December (we don't know if it works out before or after christmas), which means I DO plan to greenlight the mass production of the PCBs this year!
So much for the good news, now the ugly part...
The cases
Geez, that topic is pretty annoying and time consuming.
While all stuff HAS been picked up by the carrier, our beloved company has held them back as they first wanted to receive the final payment (last changes and the 500 produced transparend cases).
Of course (you know their speed by now), it took them 2 weeks to let me know the costs and another 2 weeks to confirm my payment.
My contact in Greece is now visiting them twice a week to speed things up and thinks that everything should be resolved next week...
Seriously, I'm making more then three crosses when everything arrived at UniquePlast...
Anyways, it's very annoying, in worst case I'll fly to Greece again (as they always seem to move forward faster when I'm around), but I'm also planning to get these moulds moved to UniquePlast within December!
I'll let you know as soon as I receive more details from my contact (should be tomorrow or on Monday).
I'm sure we can solve that, as we've solved other things as well (remember the huge task moving the parts from CC to Global Components when we moved the production to Germany...?)
Prototypes
Now that the hardware is tested, I'd love to ship out the ordered prototypes, would be a nice christmas present!
However, this mostly depends on the cases, as I need the produced cases to assemble these... so hopefully, I'll receive them in time... but I can't make any promises!
Feel free to post any questions here - I'll try to be online a bit more!
Oh, and I might setup a nice VNC on a Pyra, so you could log in and play around with it a bit!
I had TONS of work during the last few weeks and even had a few days where I was more like a Zombie than anything else, but Nikolaus has cotinued to work on stuff, zmatt has reimplemented his rotation hack (so the Pyra is finally fully usable again!) and aTc has always quickly updated the kernels.
So, here's a quick update of the current status.
Let's start with the good news first...
The PCBs
These seem to work rock solid now with the current kernel. All the hardware features we tested work fine, all bugs seem to have been fixed, so I guess we can really call the PCBs fully finished and ready for mass production!
Nikolaus made one small change / bugfix to the Display board: It was flickering sometimes under high load. It turned out that the PWM wouldn't handle the power the LCD needed which caused the flickering.
And it was also shuttering when the display brightness was dim due to the frequency the PWM used.
The PWM is now replaced (just one chip on the display board) which increases the maximum brightness of the LCD and also provides a smoother, flicker-free backlight.
We also received a production report from Global Components which show potential issues for production (pads too close to each other, etc.)
Luckily, these are just small changes, the layout doesn't change, only some components are being moved around a few 0.2mm, so no new prototypes are needed (no worries
)Nikolaus is now working on wrapping up all the production files: Cleaning up the part lists (some parts have changed), implementing the results from the production report into the design files, etc.
We plan to have them finished within December (we don't know if it works out before or after christmas), which means I DO plan to greenlight the mass production of the PCBs this year!
So much for the good news, now the ugly part...
The cases
Geez, that topic is pretty annoying and time consuming.
While all stuff HAS been picked up by the carrier, our beloved company has held them back as they first wanted to receive the final payment (last changes and the 500 produced transparend cases).
Of course (you know their speed by now), it took them 2 weeks to let me know the costs and another 2 weeks to confirm my payment.
My contact in Greece is now visiting them twice a week to speed things up and thinks that everything should be resolved next week...
Seriously, I'm making more then three crosses when everything arrived at UniquePlast...
Anyways, it's very annoying, in worst case I'll fly to Greece again (as they always seem to move forward faster when I'm around), but I'm also planning to get these moulds moved to UniquePlast within December!
I'll let you know as soon as I receive more details from my contact (should be tomorrow or on Monday).
I'm sure we can solve that, as we've solved other things as well (remember the huge task moving the parts from CC to Global Components when we moved the production to Germany...?)
Prototypes
Now that the hardware is tested, I'd love to ship out the ordered prototypes, would be a nice christmas present!
However, this mostly depends on the cases, as I need the produced cases to assemble these... so hopefully, I'll receive them in time... but I can't make any promises!
Feel free to post any questions here - I'll try to be online a bit more!
Oh, and I might setup a nice VNC on a Pyra, so you could log in and play around with it a bit!
