It's time for some updates!
Just some quick news, but as you know, there's not that much left to
do...
1. The Case
-----------
My contact in Greece finally found the time to pay FormAction a visit
and he checked that all changes we had discussed have been applied to
the mold. They have - and samples will now be produced. He plans to
visit them again on Monday to take some pictures. Hopefully, the
samples will be okay, as we can then produce the limited 500
transparent cases (which will go on sale in the shop). After that, the
molds will be moved for the proper production run.
2. The mainboard
----------------
As planned, Nikolaus was playing around with the capacitors to solve
the sirring noise.
Well, and we can now 100% confirm which capacitors are the issue...
A few solutions exist:
* Instead of using one capacitor, use smaller ones parallel. This works
- and the sirring is more quiet then, but we couldn't completely
eliminate it.
* Use an extra PCB just for these capacitors - but this is not really
feasible (way too expensive)
* Like everyone else does it: Use Tantal capacitors. Nikolaus tried it,
and yes, the Pyra was working 100% fine and without any noise. So
yes, thanks to fact that replacing the few capacitors we with Tantal
ones fixed everything, we are now 100% the capacitors are the issue -
as expected. The question is: How to proceed here. Tantalum is a
conflict material, so I wouldn't really want to use it if possible.
However, it seems like this is the only proper solution. I will try
to contact the Fairphone team to see whether we can get some
conflict-free Tantal capacitors from them.. That would be the best
solution!
On the other hand, it's only a couple of capacitors... probably
0,0000001% of what the smartphone industry uses per day... but still,
if I can get them conflict free, I will! Nikolaus will still think of
some other ideas, but that's the situation today.
3. CPU Boards
-------------
Well, they're in production. Chinese New Year will delay things a bit,
but they should be finished in March - and most probably the final
version.
And here are some things I usually don't tell you, but it shows with
what issues I also have to fight in the background: As the CPU board is
so complex, the price for the bare PCB has doubled (24 EUR instead of
12 EUR). So yay... more expenses for us, but I won't charge you more,
no worries. Oh, and about the old CPU Boards (the ones that would work
with 2GB only): Well, using them for the normal production run doesn't
make sense, as I only have a couple of 2GB RAM orders. Nikolaus was
planning to use them for a Pyra phone (so basically the screen,
processor and CPU without keyboard and nubs but with replaceable
batteries in one nice case), but he doesn't know yet if there would be
enough interest for such a project. And as the population of the CPU
boards are only guaranteed to work fine until end of April (and it
surely won't be done until then), we probably can't use those
anymore... (remember when the CC in Texas populated corrodated Pandora
boards...? Horrible failure rate...) So I guess in the end I will sell
them as keychains or similar to anyone who wants one of them. Then we
could at least cover these expenses a bit (a whopping 8000 EUR). They
will probably go on sale together with the transparent case.
4. Catch the Nikolaus!
----------------------
If you happen to visit the FOSDEM, you can try to catch Nikolaus! He's
there as a visitor as well - and he's got a Pyra prototype with him :)
Want to discuss about that?
Check out the thread on the boards here:
https://pyra-handheld.com/boards/threads/stop-the-sirring-noise.82532/
--
Greetings,
Michael Mrozek
-----------------------
OpenPandora GmbH
Geschäftsführer: Michael Mrozek
Schäffbräustr. 11
85049 Ingolstadt
Deutschland
Tel.: 0841 / 990 5548
http://www.openpandora.de/
HRB 4879, Amtsgericht Ingolstadt
-----------------------
eMail: mrozek(a)openpandora.org
