wraggster
August 24th, 2010, 20:53
News from the official Pandora Blog:
Well, quite a few things have happened, so here is another update for you.
1. All about the nubs
In case you didn't know yet: Quite a few nubs had problems right from the beginning (a failure rate of 20 - 25% is just inacceptable!) and even some of the working ones have failed a while later (though not too many, thankfully).
Therefore, the manufacturer got a pile of non-working nubs back from us to find out what's wrong and test them.
It didn't take too long to find the problem: Mostly a tolerance issue. That's why most were working, but some failing.
The first workaround: Doing a mechaniical test all of the nubs, a quick thing that allowed us to ship more Pandoras out to you, but not the final solution, because it still slows things down - and is not 100% reliable.
So I'm very happy to report that the first samples of the (hopefully) fixed nubs will be finished within this week, ready to be stress tested.
If testing goes well and it proves that those nubs have no issues, they will go into mass production.
This will hopefully mean the end of any nub problems.
What does this mean?
We will continue production of the boards and Pandoras with the tested nubs until the new ones are there. Basically, there should be no difference between tested ones and newly produced ones as long as they work. But the newly produced ones shouldn't have such high failure rate.
When the new ones are finished, the testing process (which slows production down, too) is not needed anymore and things should go more smoothly.
2. All about the boards
Right after we met in UK to assemble the very first Pandoras, we had to stall board production because we had so many broken nubs.
Replacing nubs does cost us money (and a lot of time). If it only were a few, we could've continued - but with that high failure rate, we first had to find out what was wrong here.
Even though the manufacturer was working very fast on this issue, we first had to desolder some non-working nubs so that the manufacturer could test and find the error, so that did cost us a few weeks.
Since the manufacturer started to test the nubs, production has been started again. First, we only got 100 boards to test if the nubs work fine. Then we got 200 more (currently being assembled) and the next batch that has been announced will be a whopping 500 boards (don't know exactly yet when we'll get them).
Also, as the board production company now knows the amount of work that's needed and seeing that new, working nubs are on the way, we're currently discussing with them to sign a contract about a minimum amount of boards per week.
At the moment, all they do is produce as many as they can in the time they have (as long as production wasn't reliable, they wouldn't have done any other contract).
A minimum-per-week-contract would be the best thing - as then we finally have some realistic figures on when your Pandoras will be finished and how fast it all goes. And bigger projects wouldn't interfere with board production anymore.
These are the things we're currently working on - and if they work out fine, things should finally go smoother - and A LOT faster!
3. All about the Pandora
As posted, I had a Pandora at the GamesCom - and that definately was a good idea.
Interest was pretty high, a lot of people came to see and / or test out the Pandora - and as far as I've been told, they all liked it.
That's pretty cool.
I've got another offer if you didn't manage to go there: If you ever come near Ingolstadt (Germany), you're free to come visit me to have a chat (or coffee) with me and test out the Pandora live! Just drop me a PM or mail if you want to come visit me.
Okay, that's for todays news. Hopefully more good news on board and nub production soon. Oh, and I'm currently uploading two more videos for you :)
For anyone not knowing where to find my Pandora videos - check out my YouTube channel! There are a lot of videos there, might be especially interesting for newcomers.
http://www.openpandora.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=2&Itemid=2&lang=en
Well, quite a few things have happened, so here is another update for you.
1. All about the nubs
In case you didn't know yet: Quite a few nubs had problems right from the beginning (a failure rate of 20 - 25% is just inacceptable!) and even some of the working ones have failed a while later (though not too many, thankfully).
Therefore, the manufacturer got a pile of non-working nubs back from us to find out what's wrong and test them.
It didn't take too long to find the problem: Mostly a tolerance issue. That's why most were working, but some failing.
The first workaround: Doing a mechaniical test all of the nubs, a quick thing that allowed us to ship more Pandoras out to you, but not the final solution, because it still slows things down - and is not 100% reliable.
So I'm very happy to report that the first samples of the (hopefully) fixed nubs will be finished within this week, ready to be stress tested.
If testing goes well and it proves that those nubs have no issues, they will go into mass production.
This will hopefully mean the end of any nub problems.
What does this mean?
We will continue production of the boards and Pandoras with the tested nubs until the new ones are there. Basically, there should be no difference between tested ones and newly produced ones as long as they work. But the newly produced ones shouldn't have such high failure rate.
When the new ones are finished, the testing process (which slows production down, too) is not needed anymore and things should go more smoothly.
2. All about the boards
Right after we met in UK to assemble the very first Pandoras, we had to stall board production because we had so many broken nubs.
Replacing nubs does cost us money (and a lot of time). If it only were a few, we could've continued - but with that high failure rate, we first had to find out what was wrong here.
Even though the manufacturer was working very fast on this issue, we first had to desolder some non-working nubs so that the manufacturer could test and find the error, so that did cost us a few weeks.
Since the manufacturer started to test the nubs, production has been started again. First, we only got 100 boards to test if the nubs work fine. Then we got 200 more (currently being assembled) and the next batch that has been announced will be a whopping 500 boards (don't know exactly yet when we'll get them).
Also, as the board production company now knows the amount of work that's needed and seeing that new, working nubs are on the way, we're currently discussing with them to sign a contract about a minimum amount of boards per week.
At the moment, all they do is produce as many as they can in the time they have (as long as production wasn't reliable, they wouldn't have done any other contract).
A minimum-per-week-contract would be the best thing - as then we finally have some realistic figures on when your Pandoras will be finished and how fast it all goes. And bigger projects wouldn't interfere with board production anymore.
These are the things we're currently working on - and if they work out fine, things should finally go smoother - and A LOT faster!
3. All about the Pandora
As posted, I had a Pandora at the GamesCom - and that definately was a good idea.
Interest was pretty high, a lot of people came to see and / or test out the Pandora - and as far as I've been told, they all liked it.
That's pretty cool.
I've got another offer if you didn't manage to go there: If you ever come near Ingolstadt (Germany), you're free to come visit me to have a chat (or coffee) with me and test out the Pandora live! Just drop me a PM or mail if you want to come visit me.
Okay, that's for todays news. Hopefully more good news on board and nub production soon. Oh, and I'm currently uploading two more videos for you :)
For anyone not knowing where to find my Pandora videos - check out my YouTube channel! There are a lot of videos there, might be especially interesting for newcomers.
http://www.openpandora.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=2&Itemid=2&lang=en