Pandora News - A fresh new start, Part 2 (2011-07-12)

News via http://boards.openpandora.org/index....-2-2011-07-12/

As promised, here is another blog entry, this time mainly focussing on Batch 2 and the future production.

Yesterday evening, I had a meeting with the guys behind the OpenMoko GTA04.
They have nothing to do with the previous OpenMoko hardware development, they basically built an OMAP3-PCB which fits into the OpenMoko shell.
Their PCB has similar production specs (same SoC, 8 layers, etc.) as ours, they basically live round the corner and they offered to help me (thanks a lot!)
They already have some prototype boards running (looks like a nice Linux-geek-phone to me, if you want to check it out, go to their website), which means they already found a company that can handle the production.

The meeting I had with them yesterday was a very promising one. Nikolaus, the main guy behind the GTA04, knows a lot more about PCB production than we do and therefore gave me some
contacts to some companies as well as some insider tips.

We also chatted about our experiences with CircuitCo and Nikolaus had some ideas why we had so many different issues with boards.
Additionally, he told me, that normally a proper production run should have a failure rate of about 3%. And from those 3%, some PCBs are fixable.
So far, CC had a failure rate of about 20% (even some more, if I count the ones I fixed because some parts like the volume wheel simply weren't properly soldered).
Not very impressive, so I'm even more eager now to found suitable partners.

Michael Weston sent me the latest gerber files and BoM (Bill of Materials, basically a big list of all needed components) last week.

So I'm now prepared to approach some companies and get the thing rolling properly!
If, however, you know some companies who are reliable and can do such productions as well (and which are at least located in Europe, Germany would be even better), feel free to contact me!
The more quotations I get, the more choices I have and the more I can discuss about the prices with some companies.

Let's get this thing going!