Good news, everyone!

I'm on my way back from Greece to Munich right now and it's time for another new update!

And it's not just about the cases...

So, what happened in Greece?

Three things actually...

1. Discussing the production run with FormAction ------------------------------------------------

As you know, FormAction will produce 500 sets of the transparent cases. As the seem to be finished and okay now, they will start as soon as possible. However, they also have other customers and will close down August 1st for a full month.

So we made the deal with them that they will produce as many as they can and afterwards, we'll move the molds over to UniquePlast, the new company.

Some of you might have noticed that I said "seem to be finished" - are they or aren't they? Well, I didn't find the time to fully assemble a Pyra yet with the latest set of cases I received. However, as the only fix were the shoulder buttons and the stlylus, I tested these and they were fine. Everything else WAS already okay and hasn't changed, so that should be fine.

Still, I will assemble a full Pyra during the weekend to make 100% sure it's okay.

You should be able to buy transparent Pyra cases in August - with immediate delivery, if you like :)

2. Discussing the logo plate ----------------------------

If you read my last news, you already know that the logo wasn't made of anodized aluminium but instead was painted black. This looks awful and is certainly not what we want.

So what was the problem here?

Well, apparently, it's nigh impossible getting anodized aluminium in Greece. There's just no real demand for it there and therefore, it's a material that can't be bought there.

They will still try to find a source, but if they can't find any, we'll use brushed Edelstahl. This looks nice and I can also imagine that it looks neat as well on a black shell. The logo itself will be milky white until you switch on the LEDs, so it fits well inside the metal plate.

We won't let a metal plate cause us any delays, that's for sure!

3. Upcoming production with UniquePlast ---------------------------------------

The last thing I had to do in Greece was discussing the upcoming production run of the Pyra case with UniquePlast. Especially with different plastic materials, etc. They're very experienced with different colors (and have many of them in stock). I think you will be very pleased with the final case the Pyra will have!

We could now also mix different colors together, for example, have the keyboard part a different color than the lid, etc. Time to resurrect the old thread with the different color themes to see what we can do to make it look good, eh?

Anyways, they're also on holidays from August 1st until August 21st, so nothing will happen during that time. So we're planning to move the molds there end of August / early September so that the cases can be produced in September.

BTW: It's not the first time I'm working with them. They are also producing all my MegaDrive, SNES and NES shells, incl. the variations for the Retrode Plugins. So they made at least 5000 shells in various colors for me already.

Now we're only mising the...

Mainboards ----------

And yes, some good news here as well: Global Components has populated the mainboards. Now it's time for Nikolaus to pick them up and do a quick test run. As you already know, the 4GB RAM CPU boards have been finished a while ago and are working fine.

So a bug-free mainboard is the last piece of the puzzle now!

Well, these mainboards and CPU boards will be used to assemble Pyras with the transparent cases (I already have a set of ten) and these will go to the Prototype Preorders and some developers.

This will hopefully help to improve the software a lot as well. I will also have a final (transparent case) unit with me at the GamesCom, in case you're planning to visit there.

Once we confirm the mainboards to be working fine as well... it's time to place the order for the mass production... and then it's only a bit more of waiting until we start assembling and shipping the units!

Yay!

I hope you enjoyed that little news post. Remember the live video Q&A I mentioned? Well, I'll start a poll with different timeframes soon, so we can find the best time for everone.

Hopefully, you'll have some interesting questions for me ready by then!

As usual, discuss about that at our boards here: https://pyra-handheld.com/boards/threads/back-from-greece.83048/